6 Tips for Launching a Med Sync Program

Posted on Jan 19, 2024

You’ve probably heard about Medication Synchronization (or Med Sync) programs and the benefits they offer pharmacies and patients alike. However, many independent pharmacy owners don’t know how to implement a Med Sync program at their store. To help, we’ve put together six tips for launching a Med Sync program. That way, you’ll be boosting patient compliance, increasing your pharmacy revenue, and operating more efficiently in no time!

To start a Med Sync program at your pharmacy:

1. Identify patients on multiple recurring medications.

The biggest advantage of a Med Sync program is to have all of a patient’s medications synced to the same fill date, so they can be dispensed at the same time. This saves the patient from making multiple trips to the pharmacy, eliminates confusion over when prescriptions are due to be refilled, and improves adherence by preventing delayed/missed refills. We recommend looking for patients who have been on maintenance medications, like those for blood pressure and cholesterol, for more than two months. When syncing prescriptions, make sure they all have the same day supply. For example, you wouldn’t want to sync a 30-day fill with a 90-day fill. Instead, you can use your pharmacy software to create multiple sync regimens for a patient, based on the day supply. That way you can prevent confusion and misalignment with other medications.

Enrolling these patients also allows your staff to work more efficiently, by proactively filling all the patient’s medications at once, versus one at a time. If you offer delivery or mail services, you can also reduce your delivery and shipping costs by sending one, consolidated order. Plus, pharmacies will have a better handle on their projected prescription volume, which helps them better manage their staff and inventory.

Bonus Tip: In addition to targeting patients on multiple medications, look for those that are on expensive medications as well. By enrolling patients who are using pricey medications, you’ll be better able to predict when these medications will be needed, enabling you to reduce the amount of inventory you have sitting on your shelf.

2. Educate your team.

Successful Med Sync programs utilize specific criteria for patient enrollment. For example, you may decide to focus on enrolling patients with a certain minimum number of recurring medications or low adherence. Other pharmacies may enroll patients automatically and allow them to opt out as needed.

When launching the program, it’s important to spend time training your team. Both on the program’s benefits and requirements, and how to enroll patients and manage synced prescriptions. Everyone from your technicians, cashiers, and delivery drivers can help identify new candidates for Med Sync. We also recommend reaching out to patients prior to their next sync date to determine if any medications have changed since the last fill. That way, you can proactively add new medications to the schedule or adjust medications when needed.

Bonus Tip: When training your team, don’t forget to highlight the operational efficiencies the Med Sync program will provide. Afterall, these benefits will have a direct, positive impact on their daily workload. Staff incentives and recognition are also great ways to keep your team engaged in promoting the program as well.

3.Set goals and start small.

It’s important to ramp up slowly and engage a few patients at a time. This ensures you’ll have ample time to provide medication counseling and uncover any financial barriers that may impact program compliance. For example, some patients may not be able to pay for all of their medications at once. When this happens, alerting the prescriber, medication assistance programs, generic alternatives, payment programs or bi-weekly synchronization may be able to address the issue. Plus, adding a few patients at a time keeps the Med Sync program more manageable for your staff, too.

Be sure to establish measurable goals for your medication synchronization program, so you can monitor its success. This can be something as simple as the target number of patients or prescription you hope to enroll in the program within a designated timeframe. As you get your program off the ground, don’t forget to adjust your goals to ensure continued growth.

4. Promote the program to patients.

To get patients on board, it’s essential to explain the program and how enrolling will benefit them personally. For example, if a patient struggles with transportation issues, be sure to highlight the reduced number of trips they’ll need to make each month. Once patients are enrolled in the program, be sure to check in with them too. This not only helps to build stronger relationships with your patients, but it can alert you to any barriers that may lead to program or prescription abandonment in the future.

Bonus Tip: You can also offer solutions like unit/multi-dose packaging along with Med Sync to help patients understand how to take their medications and increase the chances they will stay on track.

5. Engage prescribers.

By educating other healthcare providers about your Med Sync program and its benefits, they’ll be able to help promote the program to patients. In fact, once they’re aware you offer a Med Sync program, prescribers can alert you to patients who are struggling with adherence. Then, make sure to keep prescribers updated on enrolled patients, including for things like short fills, 90-day refill requests, overrides, or other medication-related issues that are identified.

6. Leverage your pharmacy software.

BestRx offers a variety of features to help you efficiently track the patients and prescriptions enrolled in Med Sync. These features are available with our Standard and Premium tiers and include:

- - The ability to add prescriptions to a patient’s Med Sync schedule in just a few simple clicks. Pharmacies can even pre-sync new prescriptions to an existing schedule.
  - A Med Sync popup window that appears when initiating a fill. Here, the patient’s information will be populated in the upper right corner and the next sync date, sync interval (days between pickups) and short fill eligibility will be listed on the upper left. Then, a list of all synced medications will be displayed below, including their quantity, last fill date, next fill date, and the number of refills remaining. The pharmacy can also perform certain actions right from the popup window.
  - A calendar that can be used to obtain a snapshot of the Med Sync activity for a particular day, week, or month. That way, your staff can easily view the number of prescriptions that are scheduled to be filled each day.
  - Med Sync settings that can be configured to automatically add enrolled scripts to certain workflow and refill queues.
  - Reporting, which can be used to view and manage all their enrolled patients, prescriptions, and future fill dates.

By keeping these tips in mind, launching a Med Sync program will be easy and beneficial for both your patients and pharmacy. To learn more about the Med Sync features in BestRx, and other advanced functionality that’s included in our Standard and Premium tiers, request a free demo.