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CVS Harnesses the Power of Design to Improve Health Outcomes, Consumer Experience

CVS Pharmacy is harnessing the power of design to further its mission of helping people on their path to better health. The retail division of CVS Health is introducing a new prescription management system for patients managing multiple medications in an effort to enhance patient safety.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 7 years ago | About a 4 minute read

CVS Pharmacy is harnessing the power of design to further its mission of helping people on their path to better health. The retail division of CVS Health is introducing a new prescription management system for patients managing multiple medications in an effort to enhance patient safety.

The ScriptPath Prescription Schedule features all of a patient’s current CVS Pharmacy prescription information in one place — including which medications the patient takes, when the patient should take them and how much of each medication should be taken in each dose. One of the main features of the new schedule are easy-to-understand icons that are designed to simplify how patients take medications and how caregivers give them.

“Fifty percent of patients struggle with understanding how and when to take their prescription medications and for those with complex prescription regimens it can be even more challenging,” said Troyen Brennan, M.D., M.P.H., EVP and Chief Medical Officer at CVS Health. “By providing them with a clear and concise dosing schedule, which incorporates all of their current CVS Pharmacy prescriptions and reduces the number of times a patient takes medication each day, we can help improve medication adherence and ultimately health outcomes.”

Available in both English and Spanish, the ScriptPath Prescription Schedule is available at all of CVS Pharmacy’s more than 9,700 retail pharmacy locations nationwide, upon request, and is the first element of the new ScriptPath prescription management system. Other tools, including a new prescription vial label, are expected to roll out in early 2018. The Schedule is generated by a robust scientific system created by CVS Pharmacy that automatically reviews all of a patient’s current prescription information, prescriber’s instructions and clinical data to provide a schedule of the most effective times of day to take the medications.

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Prescription information highlighted on the new schedule includes:

Personalized prescription information for the individual patient, including how much medication to take and when
Medications separated into sections for Routine, As Needed and Other medications
Clear refill instructions
Notes section for further personalization and to facilitate face-to-face pharmacist counseling

The ScriptPath Prescription Schedule also provides a dosing schedule that maximizes the effectiveness of medications and simplifies complex medication regimens, taking into account the individual patient's current CVS Pharmacy prescriptions.

CVS’s new ScriptPath system is the result of a five-year collaboration with designer Deborah Adler, who is known for her past work on Target’s ClearRX prescription packaging system which she developed as part of her graduate work at New York’s School of Visual Arts. The idea was born out of an incident in which her grandmother mistakenly took her grandfather’s medication and spurred further work in the area of improving patient outcomes. She later developed a prototype of a module labeling system for pill bottles and presented it to CVS.

“I felt they had the commitment and the will to see about such a large change,” Adler told Co.Design.

Beyond improving health outcomes for customers, the redesign is helping CVS improve customer experience as a whole: The new system will enable greater interaction between patients and pharmacists. Patients taking more than five medications each day will be offered a consultation with the store pharmacist when they pick up their prescriptions to review the Prescription Schedule and the information it provides.

“At CVS Health, we are committed to helping people on their path to better health. One of the main ways we can do that is to help our patients remain adherent to their medications,” said Kevin Hourican, EVP of Pharmacy Services at CVS Pharmacy. “Patients who take their medications as prescribed have better health outcomes than those who do not. By providing our patients with the personalized information and guidance needed to manage their medications, and most importantly, making it easier to understand and follow prescribers’ directions, we can help them remain adherent and better maintain their overall health.”