Credit: Shutterstock photoRenowned retail pharmacy giant CVS Health Corp.CVS recently launched its new pharmacy service - ScriptSync - to facilitate patients who take multiple medications, to collect their eligible maintenance prescriptions from CVS/pharmacy stores, every month. The service reflects the company's constant effort to launch variety of new products to strengthen its footprint in the billion-dollar retail pharmacy industry.
This latest initiative on CVS Health's part will promote medication adherence in the healthcare industry, which is expected to reduce overall health care costs for both patients and payors.
Medication adherence is a crucial yet complex challenge that healthcare providers like CVS Health face, while managing public health. Research has shown that patients, particularly those who suffer from chronic diseases and thus take multiple medications, often need to visit pharmacies a number of times each month for refills.
This makes medication adherence even more difficult as more often, these patients lose track with regard to different fill schedules and end up not taking regular, prescribed medications. Such failure to maintain medication adherence not only enhances the cost of the entire healthcare industry but also puts patients' health at risk.
Evidently, each year, medication non-adherence costs the health care system $300 billion, not to mention tens of thousands of lives. In fact, it has been found that as the complexity of a patient's medication regimen increases, his/her adherence to medication decreases. This is validated by the fact that almost 50% of patients with chronic diseases do not take their medications as prescribed.
CVS Health has introduced its ScriptSync service to address such challenges faced by patients prescribed with multiple medications. By aligning prescription fill schedules for patients, CVS Health seeks to offer easier and convenient medication adherence approaches to patients.
Moreover, the innovative online support feature of ScriptSync enables patients or their caregivers to conveniently view, update or even remove their prescription orders at CVS.com/ScriptSync, from the comforts of their home, thus avoiding the hassle of traveling physically to a pharmacy store. We believe this in turn gives ScriptSync patients more options to better manage their health.
At present, patients can access the ScriptSync service at all CVS/pharmacy stores, while in 2016, this service will be available through CVS/Caremark Mail Service Pharmacy.
Notably, in the recent past, the company has been focused on expanding its footprint in the retail pharmacy industry in the U.S. Earlier in May 2015, CVS Health announced the acquisition of pharmacy services provider Omnicare for $12.7 billion. The company continued its acquisition streak by taking over US-based retailer Target's in-store pharmacies and clinics for $1.9 billion in June. This latest launch reflects another such expansion attempt of the company.
We believe the ScriptSync service launch reflects CVS Health's commitment to deliver patient-centered pharmacy care and innovative digital solutions to address the pertinent issue of medication non-adherence. This should ramp up revenues from CVS Health's retail pharmacy segment in the coming quarters.
Currently, CVS Health carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some of the better-ranked stocks in the broader medical space are Abaxis, Inc. ABAX , OraSure Technologies, Inc. OSUR and NuVasive, Inc. NUVA . All the three stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
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The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
