Beating The Patient Over The Head

Something that I don’t normally do, but I am going to edit this after the fact to stress what the story really is supposed to be about since someone told me the original text might be offensive to a competitor that I respect.  The point is whether being pushy is worth it in some cases.

The other day a patient asked one of our people about a mail order order pharmacy where they had gotten a call every other day for the past 12 days about refilling their medication. Each message was slightly different – your supply of medication is about to run out, you need to refill your medication, your prescription has run out, etc.  The patient didn’t like the call program.

I found this an interesting debate…how pushy is good if you drive a desired outcome?  Also, we all obviously know that vendors and consultants don’t always make the decision so if a client tells you to do this even if it makes no sense, what do you do?

I think it makes for a good debate and had it with several clinical people:

• At what cost is a better refill rate okay…especially since this doesn’t mean that they are compliant? Are you willing to drop your patient satisfaction by several points?  (We often used to give clients a report that showed savings per disrupted member or per drop in satisfaction at my prior employer.)
• If the company is just driving up refills and can they do that without creating more waste?  This was a constant debate at mail.  One trick here is whether you base it on refill dates or days supply.
• With this frequency of calls is there a chance that you actually get people that would have refilled to just wait for the calls to come and say yes?
• If people take the call because they know you will keep calling them, is this actually better acceptance of calls or just being an “obnoxious salesperson”?
• Are you calling people that have refilled at retail due to data latency issues?
• Do you drive people back to retail?
• Have you dulled them to future calls by upsetting them on this program?

Now, on a more clinical program, my opinion here might be different. If you could successfully get an overweight individual to diet by constantly reminding them. This might be okay. It’s an interesting debate.