I recently read how a hospital was delivering discharge medications prior to a patient being discharged.
The concept is designed to transition a patient from hospital to home without disrupting their therapy, but there is a reason that hospitals have adopted this practice. CMS estimates that more than 30% of all prescriptions written are never filled. That is a pretty stark statistic considering that there were 5.8 billion prescriptions filled in 2018 in the United States.
So why is my inflamed eye in this post. Well, a week and a half ago I woke up with the feeling of something being stuck in my eye. It affected my vision which made for an interesting drive to work. By the time I arrived at work I could barely read my screen making it impossible to work. This likely was my allergies, but since this feeling of something in my eye was moving around I figured an eyelash fell in or something. I decided I needed to go to an urgent care.
After all the tests, nothing could be found. The nurse practitioner decided to send me home with an antibiotic anyway since she did find some inflammation in my eye. She told me to hang out while my discharge instructions were prepared.
The technician walks in with a box of eye drops and instructs me to take them 4 times per day for 5 days and sign my discharge paperwork. I left with the medication I needed in the hopes that nothing more serious was going on.
The point here is, by helping me get what I needed when I needed it. I was treated with minimal cost and without any additional hassle. How can you reduce hassle in your patient’s lives?
Drug School 