Clinical studies in modern healthcare have shown that patient support programs (PSPs) have a significant impact on improving adherence to medical instructions and improving healthcare outcomes. These programs focus on patients’ care needs outside of the hospital, providing personalized care, effective communication channels, medication adherence strategies, and comprehensive health education to enhance patients’ understanding of their own health and promote doctor-patient co-management.
The research paper by Diana Brixner et al. states that PSPs involving professional nurses can significantly improve medication adherence, and while the cost of medication increases, the overall healthcare costs decrease. However, the impact of PSP on medication adherence varies from program to program, so behavioral science theories and the application of digital technology are needed to improve program effectiveness. Drug adherence issues are putting significant cost pressures on healthcare systems, with the United States, for example, costing up to $290 billion in waste due to non-prescribed treatment.
Patients have various reasons for not following their doctor’s instructions, such as financial problems, not understanding the disease, choosing to ignore, forgetting to take medication, or family factors. PSPs use a variety of strategies to help patients follow their doctor’s instructions, including providing information about illness, medication management, lifestyle modifications, and emotional management. With the introduction of digital medical monitoring tools and artificial intelligence, PSPs are becoming more personalized than just the above strategies, providing information and positive guidance on a case-by-case basis, further improving communication.
Due to the development of monitoring tools such as digital healthcare, and the recent intervention of AI tools, PSP services are not only limited to preventing patient abnormalities, but can even predict patient behavior and intervene in management in advance, but if not properly designed, its value is still controversial. The use of AI prediction makes PSP management more personalized, determines information communication and positive coaching orientation according to individual circumstances, and has better communication results based on each person’s specific information and behavior content.
Considering the use of continuous information to help patients manage their illness and treatment, and providing cross-channel services via smartphones, tablets, or computers can greatly improve patient ordering, they open up a whole new perspective for PSPs, thus providing a way to address medication non-adherence, allowing the positive impact of healthcare providers to extend into the patient’s daily life.
The PATIENTSFORCE patient support program, which uses voice SMS and LINE messages to integrate care services, has achieved a medication compliance rate of more than 90-98% in the care plan for special diseases, so that the care team can more effectively assist patients in carrying out their medical orders, and then collect information on continuous care, so that doctors can have more understanding of the patient’s physical and mental condition and drug use during the return visit, and improve the patient’s medication compliance.
Zhang Xiangxin, General Manager of Caihong Health Integration Group, Sean
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