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 prescription medications, which can lead to missed doses, especially when multiple prescriptions need to be managed, and existing solutions like mail order and call-center services do not fully alleviate these problems.
Innovation Solution
A method that aligns the refill dates of multiple prescriptions to a single date, determining remaining medication supply, adjudication dates, and calculating short-fill parameters to ensure continuous medication availability, while complying with regulatory and insurance rules, and offering alternative delivery methods if necessary.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If prescriptions are filled on different dates according to individual refill schedules, then each prescription can be dispensed according to its specific requirements and regulations, but the customer must remember and visit the pharmacy multiple times which increases operational burden and risk of missed doses
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple prescription refill operations into a single aligned refill date. The system selects multiple prescriptions for alignment and determines a common refill date that satisfies all individual prescription requirements, allowing the customer to pick up all medications in one visit rather than multiple separate visits.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary calculations to determine the earliest possible alignment date by evaluating remaining medication supplies, adjudication rules, and prescription requirements before the actual refill date. This advance planning allows the customer to know in advance when to visit the pharmacy for all refills.
2Ease of operation
If the system aligns multiple prescriptions to a single date, then the customer's burden of remembering refill dates is reduced and visit frequency decreases, but the system must perform complex calculations to determine adjudication dates and short-fill parameters
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically performs all alignment calculations, adjudication date determinations, and short-fill parameter computations without requiring customer input or intervention. The pharmacy management system self-services the complex coordination task by evaluating prescription data, applying regulatory rules, and generating the alignment plan independently.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces manual calculation and coordination methods with an automated computer-based system. Instead of pharmacists manually calculating alignment dates and coordinating multiple prescriptions, the system uses software algorithms to perform these calculations electronically, substituting mechanical/computational processes for manual operations.
3Reliability
If short fills are provided to ensure continuous medication supply before alignment date, then medication availability is maintained, but additional processing and delivery coordination is required
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary determination of short-fill requirements before the alignment date by calculating remaining medication supplies and comparing them against the timeline to the aligned refill date. This advance identification allows the system to prepare and process short fills in advance, ensuring continuous medication supply without last-minute complications.
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 medication regimen. The system and method facilitate the alignment of the refill dates to an arbitrary user-selected date, while maintaining compliance with one or more rules governing the adjudication of the prescriptions.