Insight - Fall 2020

Fall 2020 | 19 Cycle Rx Zach Princell, Pharm.D., Assistant Product Manager Managing your pharmacy’s medication synchronization program has never been easier than with Cycle Rx. This powerful, easy-to-use tool assists pharmacies in enrolling and managing patients and their medications. What’s the best part? The tool is built into the NRx and PrimeCare Pharmacy Management Systems at no additional cost. Medication nonadherence for patients with chronic disease states is an ongoing problem that community pharmacies are best equipped to combat. Medication nonadherence affects as many as 40% to 50% of patients prescribed chronic disease state management therapies, is thought to cause 100,000 preventable deaths, and is suggested to cost over $100 billion in preventable medical costs each year. 1 The Journal of the American Pharmacists Association has published a study showing medication synchronization improves care quality and increases prescription volume in an independent pharmacy setting. 2 Pharmacies across the country leverage their relationships with patients to combat this nonadherence by providing medication synchronization programs that help patients better manage their medication regimens and allow for an easy one-time pickup each month. A Med Sync Program is certainly proven to help patients, but a well-implemented program can also create a substantially improved, more efficient pharmacy workflow. Med Sync Programs are designed to alleviate the need for refill requests, thereby allowing all a patient’s medications to be processed and checked at a single time. If a patient called in for refills each time an out-of-sync medication was due, it would take a significantly greater amount of time to access, process, and check each medication at separate times. The more patients enrolled in a Med Sync Program, the greater the time savings, which in turn can help your pharmacy focus more on other clinical services. Cycle Rx is used to create and maintain a synchronized medication fill date. Simply select the date that is most appropriate for the patient, which medications to enroll, and the system will automatically calculate short fills to get each medication aligned for a single fill date. The Health-Minder feature allows you to schedule and maintain refill reminders by creating reports for upcoming prescriptions due for filling for those patients enrolled in Cycle Rx. You can also use Workflow, the Tickler File, and InstantFill for an even more efficient filling process. Managing a complicated patient prescription profile with mixed- day supply prescriptions has never been easier with new features and enhancements to Cycle Rx available in Service Pack 19.1.33. The new “Rx Cycle Date” field differentiates when a sync’d prescription is due independent of the patient’s Cycle Date. With this in place, the system will automatically know to exclude a 90-day supply prescription on monthly reports until it is actually time to fill. An indicator on the patient profile was also added to alert you that the selected patient is enrolled in Cycle Rx. Be sure to watch the recording from our iQ Virtual Series, Medication Synchronization: Improve Patient Adherence with Cycle Rx, to see some of these new enhancements in action and for some excellent information on how your pharmacy can get started with Cycle Rx today. Sources: 1 Kleinsinger F. The Unmet Challenge of Medication Nonadherence. Perm J. 2018;22:18-033. 2 Hinson JL, Garofoli GK, and Elswick BM. The impact of medication synchronization on quality care criteria in an independent community pharmacy. J Am Pharm Assoc (2003). 2017 Mar-Apr; 57(2):236-240. Leverage Cycle Rx to Improve Medication Adherence