With the increasing aging population and prevalence of chronic diseases, polypharmacy has surged, with studies indicating that over 40% of older adults regularly take five or more medications. The CDC found that about 42% of people ages 65 and older took five or more prescription medications from 2015 to 2018. As medication usage escalates, there is a noticeable increase in medication errors, adverse drug reactions, non-adherence, and suboptimal drug selection. These challenges not only compromise patient health outcomes but also carry a substantial economic cost.
The Economic Burden of Drug-Related Problems
Drug-related problems inflict substantial economic costs, estimated to reach hundreds of billions of dollars each year in the U.S. alone. Researchers from the University of California San Diego estimated that the “annual cost of prescription drug-related morbidity and mortality resulting from non-optimized medication therapy was $528.4 billion in 2016, with a plausible range of $495.3 billion to $672.7 billion.” Payors, providers and patients bear the burden of these costs, which include increased utilization, medical costs, and more.
Drug-related problems frequently lead to unnecessary hospital admissions, emergency department (ED) visits, prolonged hospital stays, and additional treatments for adverse drug reactions. For example, adverse drug events account for nearly 700,000 emergency department visits and 100,000 hospitalizations each year in the U.S.
While the intangible costs of drug-related problems are difficult to quantify, they are undeniably significant. These intangible costs, which include reduced quality of life, elevated stress levels, and mental health impairments, put a heavy burden on patients and their families and can result in poor health outcomes and increased healthcare costs.
Addressing these Challenges
The industry recognizes an urgent need to enhance and broadly implement strategies that reduce the staggering costs associated with drug-related problems. By making personalized comprehensive medication reviews more accessible, strengthening patient education, and leveraging advanced medication management technologies, we can significantly alleviate these issues.
Scaling Personalized Comprehensive Medication Reviews
Comprehensive Medication Reviews (CMRs) play an essential role in preventing medication-related problems and ensure medications are appropriately used to optimize patients’ health outcomes.
However, CMRs can be incredibly time-consuming, a factor that is compounded by the complexity of each patient case. In addition, effective CMRs rely on access to comprehensive patient information, including medical history, current health status, and laboratory results which is often not easily available for the review. Studies indicate that a single comprehensive review can take upwards of 45 minutes to an hour per patient, depending on the complexity of the case.
Utilizing the Latest Technology
“AI technologies can help payers augment these efforts and optimize drug regimens at a larger scale, with higher clinical accuracy, and greater financial impact… A key opportunity with AI-based solutions like MDI Health is the ability to drive a much more personalized intervention for a bigger proportion of the population”. – Beckers Payer Issues.
MDI Health algorithms run personalized analyses on the entire patient population, while analyzing everything from medications to conditions, labs, and demographics, and instantly generate personalized recommendations for medication regimen changes that will prevent drug-related problems and their associated costs.
With MDI’s proactive identification of high-risk patients and instant generation of interventions, the system improves the clinical quality and significantly reduces review time to a few clicks of a button. Empowering clinicians to scale personalized medication management programs and prevent costly drug-related problems.