Express Scripts Launches “Virtual Coaching” To Help With Medication Adherence
This article was originally published in The Pink Sheet Daily
Executive Summary
The online service is aimed at helping patients understand their disease states and properly administering self-injected drugs. Pharmaceutical manufacturers could help develop content.
In an effort to improve patients’ adherence to self-injected drug regimens, pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Holding Co. has launched “virtual coaching,” an online tool to help patients better understand their diseases and learn about the proper administration of medications.
“We spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about how we can help [patients] stay compliant to therapies,” Kevin Cast, vice president of strategy and contracting, pharma & biotech at Express Scripts, said, noting that for many specialty medications, retention of administration instructions given in a doctor’s office can sometimes be lacking. “It’s one thing to be trained in a doctor’s office on how to self-inject medications, but it’s another thing when it’s 7:00 at night or 6:30 in the morning and you are trying to remember all the instructions.”
To that end, the virtual coaching “literally allows a patient to click online on a website and they can see someone [self-injecting] or be coached by a nurse,” he added.
The program is launching with four specific conditions targeted: fertility, hepatitis C, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple scleroses. Once the impact on adherence in these areas is fully evaluated, more could be added, Cast said.
Though not a part of this initiative, Express Scripts recently released data regarding how adherence to diabetes medication led to lower hospitalization rates (Also see "Improved Adherence To Diabetes Drugs Can Lower Hospitalizations 13%, Study Finds" - Pink Sheet, 20 Aug, 2012.).
Content From Manufacturers
Cast described the role that pharmaceutical companies can play in helping develop the virtual coaching content that patients will access.
“We have been in conversations with manufacturers about helping us develop the different virtual coaching tools,” Cast said, although he declined to identify specific manufacturers that have been contacted. “So, if a particular manufacturer wanted to have a dedicated website, for example, for self-administration of a hepatitis product, we could work with them on developing that website.”
Cast said they would be looking for manufacturers to share the costs of developing the content.
He added that this would not necessarily be a platform for manufacturers to use as an avenue for any direct-to-consumer marketing. “The number one purpose is keeping patients adherent to therapy and getting them to feel comfortable about self-administering, for example, an injectable drug themselves.”
Getting the word out about these virtual coaching tools remains a work in progress, with an early emphasis on using social media. For example, he said the tools could be posted to online communities that cater to those specific conditions. Manufacturers also could broadcast their availability through the information they are disseminating.
“We could do communications in products that we’re shipping out to patients (i.e. a flyer included about the virtual coaching tools),” Cast said. “There are a lot of different ways to broadcast this.”
This program would not be the first time manufacturers got involved in online initiatives to address medication adherence. A number are participating in “Script Your Future,” a three-year campaign organized by the National Consumer League that is evaluating adherence when supported by public education and online tools (Also see "When Interests Align: Medication Adherence" - Pink Sheet, 1 Jul, 2011.). Express Scripts was not a part of that campaign, but Medco, which it acquired, was, as well as CVS Health Corp.
Cast didn’t offer specific goals that Express Scripts is looking to use as a success measure, but indicated that the next step in the program will be to tie the use of virtual coaching to patient outcomes.
“The outcomes are the Holy Grail,” he said. “If you can actually link the use of the virtual coaching tool into a more compliant patient, that would be a win-win for everyone, but we have not taken that step yet.”