Dr. Michelle Hon, left, director of experiential education, and Dr. Catherine Oswald, right, associate dean of academic affairs and assessment, pose with Pills2me founder and CEO Leslie Asanga at Roseman University in Henderson Tuesday, May 2, 2023. The Pills2me app provides for free delivery of pharmaceutical drugs and connects users to pharmacists that provide medication therapy management (MTM).
Tuesday, June 6, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Pills2me founder and CEO Leslie Asanga displays the Pills2me app on his smartphone at Roseman University in Henderson Tuesday, May 2, 2023. The Pills2me app provides for free delivery of pharmaceutical drugs and connects users to pharmacists that provide medication therapy management (MTM).
Leslie Asanga knows how dangerous medication can be when not used properly.
The pharmacist and founder of medication delivery application Pills2Me said he had seen a lot of hospitalizations, emergency room visits and deaths that could have been prevented if patients had more guidance on the medications they had taken.
Through a partnership with Roseman University of Health Sciences launched this year, Asanga’s Pills2Me application, which began as a prescription delivery service, will now be connecting patients with a service called medication therapy management.
“Medication nonadherence is a big issue (and) one of the top reasons why people end up in the ER, or people with chronic diseases get hospitalized, rehospitalized or visit the hospital multiple times a year,” said Asanga, a Las Vegas resident. “(We) want to improve patient outcomes and reduce unnecessary adverse effects of medication nonadherence, and medication therapy management is a huge part of that.”
Medication therapy management is when a patient sits down with a medical provider and discusses the medications they’re taking to “find opportunities to enhance medication use,” said Catherine “Leiana” Oswald, professor and associate dean for academic affairs and assessment at Roseman University’s College of Pharmacy.
Those opportunities can be as big as saving a diabetic from future limb amputation by helping manage medication dose frequency, or as small as recommending a cheaper medication option for patients — both issues Asanga says he’s seen in the field.
People, like diabetics, who use medication over a long period of time or those who are using at least five prescription or over-the-counter medications at once can benefit most from this service.
About 66% of adults in the United States take prescription drugs. In the past 30 days, around 47% of adults between the ages of 20 to 59 years old took a prescription drug. In the same time period, 85% of adults age 60 or older took a prescription drug.
The average U.S. resident spent about $1,200 a year on prescription drugs in 2019, according to Singlecare — a company that offers pharmacy discount cards for medications.
In the United States, 7,000 to 9,000 people die annually due to medication error, which the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention defines as “any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient, or consumer.”
This can occur as early as when a doctor is prescribing a patient medication and as late as when someone has already consumed or administered it, according to a 2023 study out of Drexel University’s College of Medicine.
Asanga said that seniors could fall victim to medication error whether it’s because they are “not coherent” enough to take the right doses, or they are suffering negative side effects. People over the age of 65 make up almost 17% of Nevada’s population, according to census estimates.
Consequences from medication errors and other mismanagement situations cost the nation around $177 billion a year while leaving individuals with physical and mental complications, Asanga said.
“Besides the direct costs of getting hospitalized and racking up tens of thousands in hospital bills, there’s also those indirect costs, like affecting your ability to work … just because you’re taking your medication wrong,” Asanga said. “Medication therapy management can help decrease costs in the health system in general, and also the patient.”
But many people aren’t aware of the program or don’t have access to health professionals, and the majority of states haven’t adopted any frameworks or definitions for these programs, according to the National Board of Medication Therapy Management.
According to data from Medicare Part D, Nevada has almost 500,000 Medicare beneficiaries that could also utilize medication therapy management services. But it remains underutilized, Asanga said.
“Patients don’t realize that there are pharmacists and pharmacies in Southern Nevada that will do the sit-downs with their patients, that want to help a little bit more than just dispensing the medication to the patient,” Oswald said.
That’s one of the reasons Roseman University’s College of Pharmacy was driven to partner with Pills2Me to expand medication management services through the company’s application.
Roseman University received grant funding from a state sub-award through the Department of Health and Human Services’ division of public health. The grant focuses “on improving healthcare outcomes for patients with diabetes and cardiovascular disease.”
Oswald said the university wanted to put those funds toward a partnership with Asanga — a Roseman alum and former student of Oswald’s.
“We were looking at ways to create awareness around medication therapy management for people who do not know that exists, and for those who know about medication therapy management, I wanted to create a feature on the app that will make it easy for them to access health care professionals that can help with medication therapy management,” Asanga said.
Because the Pills2Me application serves Southern Nevada’s elderly and disabled populations, Oswald believed it would be a happy marriage between the pill delivery application and university’s Medicare Call Center.
Used as a community service project for students, the on-campus call center works with disabled and elderly patients that may benefit from Medicare coverage to get them enrolled in the program.
Students working in the call center can also identify patients that might qualify for medication therapy management, then pass those eligible patients to qualified Roseman faculty that can provide medication therapy management services or direct them to community locations.
Oswald said most pharmacies, like CVS and Walgreens, provide these Medicare-covered services to the public, but they aren’t well advertised.
With the new launch, patients using the free Pills2Me application can order their medication, see which local pharmacies have medication therapy management services and either schedule a physical appointment at one of those businesses or connect online with a health care professional through the application.
“Ask any pharmacist, they love the opportunity to sit down with patients and go over their medications and help them help them even if they don’t change anything about the medication therapy – it’s why we become pharmacists,” Oswald said. “We just need to continue to promote the opportunity … and hopefully increase the awareness of these types of services that patients are able to receive.”
