Prescription Refill Date Alignment System
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Solution Overview
Problem
Customers face inconvenience and potential health issues due to varying refill dates of multiple prescriptions, which can lead to missed doses, especially when remembering multiple dates is challenging and pharmacy rules restrict refill periods and quantities.
Innovation Solution
A method to align the refill dates of multiple prescriptions to a single alignment date, determining remaining medication supply, next adjudication dates, and calculating short-fill parameters to ensure continuous medication supply without exhausting existing stock, while complying with regulatory and insurance rules.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If prescriptions are refilled according to individual refill dates, then each prescription can be replenished on time, but the customer must remember multiple dates and make multiple trips to the pharmacy
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple prescription refill operations into a single aligned refill date. The system calculates an alignment date that coordinates refills for multiple prescriptions, allowing the customer to receive all refills in one trip rather than making separate trips on different dates. This merging of operations maintains reliable refill timing while significantly improving customer convenience.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary calculation of alignment dates and short-fill quantities before the actual refill process. By pre-determining the optimal alignment date and calculating the appropriate short-fill amounts for each prescription, the system ensures that all prescriptions can be refilled on the same date without any running out of medication, thus maintaining reliability while simplifying customer operations.
2Ease of operation
If prescriptions are aligned to a single refill date, then customer convenience is improved, but the complexity of calculating alignment dates and short-fill quantities increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements self-service automation where the computer automatically calculates alignment dates and short-fill quantities based on input data from prescriptions and customer information. The automated calculation process eliminates the need for manual coordination of multiple refill dates, handling the computational complexity internally while presenting a simple aligned refill date to the customer.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses feedback loops to verify that the calculated alignment date and short-fill quantities will prevent any prescription from running out before the alignment date. The system continuously checks whether the short-fill amounts are sufficient and adjusts calculations as needed, ensuring that the complexity is managed systematically while maintaining accuracy.
3Reliability
If short-fill quantities are calculated to prevent running out of medication, then medication continuity is ensured, but the precision of calculating remaining supply and alignment timing increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary calculation of the alignment date based on the remaining day supply of each prescription. By calculating forward from the current date using the remaining supply information, the system determines an alignment date that ensures no prescription will run out before that date. This preliminary calculation approach maintains measurement precision while ensuring medication continuity.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameter of short-fill quantity from a standard full refill amount to a calculated partial amount based on the time until the alignment date. By adjusting the fill quantity parameter to match the precise remaining supply needs, the system ensures that medications will last exactly until the alignment date without running out, thereby maintaining high reliability while using precise measurement of remaining supplies.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method facilitate alignment of refill dates associated with a plurality of prescriptions, such that each of the plurality of prescriptions requires a refill on the same date, thus limiting the number of occasions on which a customer must visit the pharmacy to retrieve refills of the aligned prescriptions, and increasing the likelihood that the customer will comply with the prescribed medication regimen. The system and method facilitate the alignment of the refill dates while complying with one or more rules governing the adjudication of the prescriptions.