3 powerful outcomes of prescription portability

We talked to Tony Little, SVP of Digital Prescription Services at Prescryptive, about the impact of prescription portability on savings and health outcomes.

Let’s talk about the power of digital prescriptions. Tony, can you tell us what this technology means for the healthcare space?

It’s the concept of using the prescription as a bridge between two types of care — medical care and self care. In the U.S. especially, there’s no good way to connect the two — you get a prescription and you’re kind of on your own. The prescription itself is the bridge between medical care and self care. It has a lot to do with putting that prescription back in our hands, turning patients into consumers.

The ability to land a prescription on your phone in the doctor’s office and look at any barrier to good medication therapy, to getting quality medication therapy so you become healthy, is something that just has never really been done and prescriptive is doing it.

Tony Little, SVP, Digital Prescription Services, Prescryptive

Can you explain how Prescryptive’s patented digital prescription is changing the game?

Instead of a paper prescription, the doctor sends you a digital version of it that lands on your phone. This enables you to make decisions about your prescription in your doctor’s office so you can make value- and cost-based judgments when it matters the most, in front your doctor.

The digital prescription is making the entire process better, giving the patient more ownership of their health, improving adherence, all the benefits you just spoke about. It’s something that impacts the entire health care process. Is that an accurate statement?

Yeah, it sure does. There’re all these barriers the digital prescription tackles that gives the health care system a new tool to improve medication therapy. There are very few technology solutions in market today that do these three things: One, save money for the patient, two save money for the plan, and three, improve outcomes. Prescryptive does all three.

What do you see coming next?

A digital prescription is a digital front-door — a new moment in time between the doctor and the pharmacy that makes other programs more valuable. Downstream effects include better adherence to medication, healthier outcomes, and less cost to the health care system. It’s the idea of how do we continue to make better medication therapy experiences, so it doesn’t feel like the doctor is just throwing you over the fence to the pharmacy? Reality is they (pharmacies) can’t control their costs. There’re all these middlemen taking cuts. The digital prescription and prescription portability cuts out some of that waste in the middle, which is important for us to continue to strive for in health care.