Objective: Our objective was to increase the percentage of patients per month at an academic Urogynecology practice who receive their preferred overactive bladder medication from baseline 39.5% to 45%.
Study design: Data were extracted via Epic report. Manual chart review and calls to patients and/or pharmacy were completed to obtain status of medication access and reasons why medications were not taken. A targeted intervention was implemented with creation of a written document to help guide patients with options to decrease prescription costs. After this document was embedded into Epic after visit summary documentation, a repeat analysis was performed.
Results: The most common barrier to medication access was cost; specifically, the medication was not covered and a prior authorization was not initiated. Before the intervention, more than 60% of patients did not persist with their initially prescribed overactive bladder medication at a 6-month follow-up interval from office visit. Following implementation of a cost-navigation guide, persistence increased to 45.5% at a 3-month follow-up interval.
Conclusions: A targeted intervention on cost navigation of prescriptions can have a positive effect on patient access and persistence of using overactive bladder medications. Our practice continues to use our prescription navigation handout.
Yanghee Courbron,1 Caroline Foust-Wright
- From the Maine Medical Partners, Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery, South, Portland, ME.