Enhancing Medication Refill Efficiency Increases Caregivers’ Time with Patients

THE CHALLENGE

UnityPoint Health provides care to metropolitan and rural communities across Iowa, western Illinois, and southern Wisconsin. With 17 regional hospitals across seven different service regions and more than 370 clinics, the organization manages millions of medication refill requests annually, requiring it to continually evaluate processes to improve efficiency.

THE SOLUTION

UnityPoint Health implemented the Health Catalyst Embedded Refills™ application, directly integrating medication renewal decision support into the EHR workflow and streamlining the medication refill workflow. The centralized refill team worked with providers to determine which refill requests the central team should manage and which requests, such as requests for controlled substances, should be routed for provider review.

The refill team standardized the data team members’ review to determine if the medication refill request could be processed and established patient handoff processes, ensuring patients who have outstanding care, such as laboratory tests or results, receive the needed care.

THE RESULT

UnityPoint Health successfully increased medication refill efficiency and decreased labor costs while maintaining accuracy, increasing the time providers and clinic staff spend with patients. Medication refill requests managed by the centralized team are processed in just 1.5 minutes.

• $3.1M cost savings over two years, the result of 91.5K staff labor hours avoided processing medication refills.
• 17.1K provider labor hours were avoided, the result of processing 2.9M medication refills using the application.
• Less than a 24-hour turnaround time for most medication refill requests.

“The value of our work goes beyond the $3.1M in cost savings. We’re quickly meeting patient needs and increasing our caregivers’ time with their patients.”

Anna Keller, BSN, RN, Executive Director, UnityPoint Ambulatory IntelliCenter

ADDITIONAL READING

• A Prescription for Success: Embedded Decision Support Improves Refill Timeliness and Saves $1.6M
• Medication Refill Improvements Reduces Labor Burden and Saves $3.4M
• Closing Gaps in Care Through Medication Refill Technology
• Automation and Delegation of Medication Refill Processing Creates Capacity for a Patient-Centered Medical Home
• Increasing Centralized Capacity for Prescription Renewal Requests