Medication Refill Improvements Reduces Labor Burden and Saves $3.4M

THE CHALLENGE

Medication refills are a critical yet labor-intensive aspect of patient care. To enhance efficiency and improve the provider experience, Community Health Network (CHNw) embarked on a journey to reduce its medication refill labor burden, standardize and streamline processes, and increase the amount of patient-facing time available to providers.

THE PROJECT

Identifying medication refills as a high-value improvement opportunity, CHNw assembled a team of key stakeholders, including primary care physicians, pharmacists, and staff, to evaluate current practices and standardize medication refills for primary care. The organization implemented Embedded Refills™ by Health Catalyst^®, leveraging the power of standard, automated, protocol-driven workflows to decrease refill processing time and time needed to uncover missing office visits and laboratory tests essential for the safe continuation of medications.

With comprehensive pre-launch training, onsite support during go-live, and physician champions, CHNw effectively launched the project and monitored the adoption of new medication refill processes. Providers and staff quickly recognized the value of the improvements, resulting in fewer in-basket refill messages and fewer repetitive administrative tasks.

THE RESULT

In just 16 months, CHNw’s improvement efforts yielded significant results, including reduced time spent on medication refills, enabling providers to invest more time in patient care, and expanding refill capacity without adding additional FTEs, lowering costs.

• $3.4M cost savings, the result of processing 1.7M medication refills via the Embedded Refills application and a 69 percent delegation rate.
• More than half of all medication refill requests are processed the same day—and nearly 80 percent within the next day.
• 13.4K provider labor hours and 102K staff labor hours avoided processing medication refills.

“When changing provider practices, it’s vital to demonstrate positive impacts on workflow, provider and staff well-being, and patient experience, not just financial results. Embedded Refills achieved these goals and saved millions.”

Anjanette Wicker, MSN, RN, AMB-BC, Director of Nursing Ambulatory, Community Health Network

ADDITIONAL READING

• 5 Tips, Tools to Simplify Prescription Refill Workflows
• Technology Solutions for Improved Medication Compliance, Patient Engagement, and Reduced Physician Burnout
• Increasing Centralized Capacity for Prescription Renewal Requests
• Automation and Delegation of Medication Refill Processing Creates Capacity for a Patient-Centered Medical Home
• Closing Gaps in Care Through Medication Refill Technology