Medication Therapy Management is key to preventing medication errors. Medication errors currently account for 14% of the healthcare costs in US; it is the 8th leading cause of death.
Medication therapy management addresses the root cause of errors which are increasing due to the increasing use of medications and complex treatment plans. Active Wellness Medication Therapy Management incorporates the best practices coupled with an AI-driven engines prevents medication errors at both the consumer end and the treating care team.
Examples of Medication Errors
Case Study – 1
We all know that Pharmacists / Nurses are overworked and even the most careful care teams need help and proper records for managing patients.
I came across a case where the hospital pharmacy dispensed medication to the patient on a busy night and the patient developed severe side effects and had to rush to the ICU
On examining the medications and prescription, it came out that there was a dispensing error. The pharmacist felt devastated.
However, timely intervention saved the patient but raised healthcare costs.
Case Study-2
A physician in a hospital was taking the history of both the past illness and medication history.
The patient did not give a history of drug allergies or drug being taken.
The prescribed medications led to serious adverse effects. Deeper probing led to the discovery of a drug allergy that was not revealed to the physician. This led to the patients stay prolonged by one week, who survived but at an avoidable cost.
Had both these medication errors could have been prevented and the costs avoidable.
Both cases illustrate the need for an ongoing digital medication therapy management system that will help proactively prevent medication errors.
This leads us to question how can we prevent medication therapy errors through an ongoing monitoring system.
The solution is to use the next generation tool such as Active Wellness, a proactive health & medication therapy management ecosystem. This not only manages medication but also the health journey from childhood to old age. The Future of our Health Is with Active Wellness Platform.
This easy-to-understand article will help you better understand medication therapy management. By the end, you will know how digital approaches such as Active Wellness Solutions integrate Comprehensive Medication Management through ActiveMED.
Your virtual pharmacy ActiveMED integrates your prescriptions with your medical records. It monitors, tracks, alerts, and escalates gaps in medication compliance, side effect monitoring, and effectiveness that are available to your treating physicians to decide your care plans. Continuous analysis of ongoing medication and medical conditions detects, flags and prioritizes the issue for provider interventions.
A true Digital solutions integrate primary care and screening for disease and early detection coupled with intervention and reversal. It extends into home care, telehealth, biometric monitoring, genomics, Lab Tests & Pharmacies integrated with Care Plans. It enables health & disease management in the comfort of your home.
Active Wellness Consumer Solutions is a whole-of-life solution to manage health covering all facts such as physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual health and happiness. Is the future of Care and provides a one-stop solution to managing health and sickness through simple and easy steps.
What Is Medication Therapy Management
Medication therapy management (clinical pharmacy services) aims to reduce medication-related problems and their associated consequences.
Medication therapy management is a patient-centered service where pharmacists provide continuous & ongoing medication review (prescribed course of medical treatment) to improve patient therapeutic outcomes. It involves a continuous, ongoing review of a patient’s medication regimen.
What Are 5 core elements of MTM?
- Patient medication regimen (prescribed course of medical treatment).
- A personal medication record.
- Medication action plan
- Intervention and referral for drug therapy problems
- Documentation and follow-up
Currently MTM services encompasses a wider meaning which is linked to service-level expectations, including assessing drug-related needs, identifying drug therapy problems, care planning, and follow-up. Medication therapy management is a professionally delivered service with common core features and goals. It needs to be imbedded into care plans and are an integral part thereof.
Need For Medication Therapy Management
To Manage Medication Therapy
The Health care provider needs to change the medications from time to time based on a patient’s changing health condition and how the patient is responding to the given treatment. Medication therapy management manages these changes and help patients get the right medications at the right doses at the right time.
To Ensure Medications are Taken In a Proper Way
Medication therapy management helps ensure patients take their medications safely and effectively. It continuously checks for medications side effects or interaction with past history. Thereby helps prevent adverse drug reactions.
To Promote Adherence to Medication Regimens
Especially Medication therapy management helps patients understand why they need to take their medications, how to take them correctly, and what to do if they miss a dose. They also explain when the patient should take the medication, what diet they must follow, and how many days they must take the medication. It helps to improve medication adherence and prevent medication-related problems.
Reduce healthcare costs
If you take the wrong medicine, you will have side effects, so you have to rush the patient to hospitals and emergency rooms, which raises the cost of healthcare. Medication management helps prevent these problems and reduce healthcare costs.
Causes of Medication Errors
The common Causes of medication errors cause.
Human Error
Human error is one of the major causes of medication errors, and it contributes to the majority of Medication errors made by healthcare providers, such as prescribing, dispensing, or administering the wrong medication, dosage, or route of administration.
Communication Breakdowns
Lack of communication or miscommunication between healthcare providers, patients, and caregivers regarding medication use coupled with the busy schedule of the healthcare provider contributes to this communication breakdown.
Incomplete Patient Information
Lack of information about a patient’s medical and medication history, allergies, and current medications lead to medication errors.
Drug-Related Factors
Medications with similar names, packaging, or dosages can be easily confused, leading to dispensing errors, and contribute to medication errors / adverse reaction.
All of these are avoidable using Active Wellness Solutions, which is an AI driven tool to assist all health care stakeholders.
Medication Errors and Their Costs
Now let’s see how medication errors will affect a person’s life as well and their bank balance
- Medication errors can cause serious patient consequences and result in significant costs for the healthcare system.
- They are avoidable and caused by inappropriate use of medicine.
- This can pose serious threats to a patient’s life.
- Sometimes we may also lose lives because of a medication error.
- Medication errors have a serious adverse effect on different parts of the body.
- It can occur at any point, including prescribing, dispensing, administering, and monitoring.
- They have minor to serious adverse effects, even if they may cause the patient’s death.
- Some common adverse effects are allergic reactions, nausea, vomiting, and drug interactions.
- Medication errors can also result in legal costs and damage a healthcare provider’s reputation.
Global Medication Errors Snapshot
- According to the global medication report, medication errors have been increasing annually. In 2017, it was 10.1%, now, in 2023, it is 11.9%. There is an increase in medication errors.
- The total costs stood at 326 million U.S. dollars in 2018.
- This cost will increase to 362 million U.S. dollars up to 2026.
- 44,000 to 98,000 people die every year due to medication errors, and this is the eighth leading cause of death all over the world.
Solution To Medication Errors
Digital Approaches Provide Several Benefits to Patients and Consumers
In real time, patients can use digital tools to access medication information, including dosages, side effects, and interactions. It helps patients make quick decisions about their medication regimen or treatment.
Active Wellness Drug Management Tool ActiveMED, through an AI engine, prevents interactions and errors, both minor and major, before they happen by warning both the consumer and the treating physicians of potential and escalate them. Here, Active Wellness Solutions comes into play. Everyone can make use of the Active Wellness Solution for medication management through ActiveMED
Personalize Medication Therapy Management
Active Wellness Solutions encourages having the complete family on the platform so that allergies and interactions across the family are available for the AI engine to analyze and report. The continuous medication history enables the move toward precision and personalized medications
Provide specific care plans for specific individuals according to their needs, and the type of disease medications optimized for every individual. They make sure that the medications are both clinically-effective and cost-effective. It ensures that people make the right choice at the right time.
Recording of the Side Effects, Efficacy, and Effectiveness
An ongoing recording of these builds a record of what drugs are effective and what are not effective for patients and improves the prescribing skills of the physicians
Improved Medication Adherence
Digital approaches remind us to take medications regularly, which can improve medication adherence and health outcomes. The path toward the future of healthcare has evolved so quickly.
Overall, digital approaches and ongoing medication reviews can provide more personalized, accessible, and effective medication management to patients and consumers, potentially improving health outcomes and quality of life.
Digital Anywhere Anytime Care is one of them, also known as telehealth or telemedicine, and it has several benefits.
Benefits of Digital Anytime, Anywhere Care
There are many benefits of digital apps and AI, like active wellness solutions that help us monitor and check for coming risks and demonstrate preventive measures to save our lives.
- We don’t need to travel to the doctor. It reduces travel time and also reduces expenses.
- Many people live in remote areas, so digital care is very helpful for them. It provides proper care to the patients living there and cuts their travel expenses.
- It is very convenient and flexible, so we can access it from anywhere at any time.
- Digital anywhere anytime care helps people schedule appointments, receive health plans, and receive treatment regimens.
- It helps people reduce healthcare costs by avoiding unnecessary hospital and emergency room visits for simple issues.
- Digital anywhere, anytime care improves patient outcomes by providing timely and convenient access, promoting medication adherence, early detection of problems, and timely management of those problems, reducing the patient’s risk for life.
- It improves patient efficiency by enabling remote consultations, reducing all administration-related tasks, and facilitating communication with healthcare providers.
Medication Is First Line of Rx. Across Different Age Groups, Genders, and Medication Forms
The need for medication varies based on age, gender, and medical conditions. Healthcare providers must consider these factors when prescribing and monitoring medications to ensure patients receive safe, effective, and appropriate medication therapy.
For Children
Children require smaller doses of medications than adults due to their smaller body sizes and developing organ systems. They have unique medication needs, such as liquid formulations and powder forms which mix water and are given to the children.
All children’s medications are in powder or liquid form due to their inability to swallow tablets.
Adolescents
This age group requires a dosage of drugs higher than the children and lower than the adults.
Adolescents may require non-judgmental counseling and education regarding medication use, potential side effects, and adherence.
Adults
They require medications for various conditions, including hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and mental health disorders.
Adults may need personalized medication regimens based on their medical history, lifestyle, and preferences.
Adults may also require monitoring for potential medication-related problems, such as drug interactions and adverse effects. they are very prone to the use of tobacco and drugs.
Elderly
Especially elderly individuals have not only age-related changes but also disease that require them to take multiple Medications which can be complex. This is associated with altered organ function and their bodies that can affect medication and metabolism.
Elderly individuals may also be more susceptible to medication-related problems such as falls, cognitive impairment, and adverse drug events. It is because elderly people are unable to express the symptoms correctly, and they also forget and improperly take medicines. It leads to drug interactions.
Females
Healthcare providers prescribe some medications differently for males and females due to differences in their physiology and metabolism. Female bodies are different from male bodies in many aspects, The hormones are different in males and females, and tolerance to drugs also differs.
Females are prone to many diseases because they have frequent changes in hormone levels during pregnancy and after the delivery of the baby. One of the common diseases caused by changes in hormones is PCOS. Many of the medicines are specifically designed for women. They use some unique medicines, such as suppositories, creams, and gels.
What should be done to improve Medication Therapy Ouctcomes
Consumers: Consumer having understood medication therapy management, here’s what we should do.
- Never take medications that you are unaware of.
- Always see whether the medication is same as prescribed.
- Avoid keeping different medications in the same packaging. It is one of the major reasons for the medication error.
Pharmacies: Keep all the medicines on different shelves and label them to avoid confusion. Depending on how busy the pharmacy is, there should always be an extra person in the pharmacy, so when the pharmacy is very busy, the extra person can also take charge. It helps reduce medication errors.
During administration, the nurse and the physician should check the prescription and then administer it.
To make this easy we have Active Wellness solution, integrates Comprehensive Medication Management through ActiveMED with Prescription and disease management. And also makes these available to the Providers in the care team through ActiveMD, a physician Portal .
Your E-pharmacist. ActiveMED monitors, tracks, alerts, and remove gaps in care. Continuous analysis of medication errors and medical conditions detects, flags, and prioritizes issues.
ActiveMED provides health plans, reduces patient hospitalizations, improves quality scores, and increases return on investment.
ActiveMED analyses clinical data from multiple dimensions of social, behavioral, mindset, and physical health to provide effective, personalized, evidence-based medication management and care. It is integrated with the Consumer Portal and provides a seamless consumer experience.
- It provides personalized care plans for each individual.
- Provide timely interventions, and avoid the potentially harmful consequences of non-optimized care.
- Provide evidence-based medication for patients to improve clinical outcomes.
- 2.7 million admissions of people in the U.S. annually due to medication errors
Active Wellness Solution also has a consumer solution service as part of it where you can ask your questions to your provider, consult a doctor, order tests, and also view your own drugs, You can also get your diet charts, and It is super easy to navigate.
By Dr. B S Grewal
MD, MPH, MPhil, OCP
CEO
Active Health Technologies
https://activewellness.in
