Pharmacy Chain Launches Pilot Program that Provides Loyalty Points for Healthy Behaviours and Medication Adherence

Abstract

Collecting reward points or travel miles when buying a product or service is a popular consumer pursuit in Canada — involving retail outlets, airlines, gas stations, credit-card companies and more. Research shows that tens of millions of Canadians are collecting at least one category of loyalty points and many are in multiple programs. Lawtons Drugs in Atlantic Canada — in partnership with LoyaltyOne, owner and operator of the AIR MILES Reward Program — has taken this concept and put a new twist on it, with the goal of promoting medication adherence and healthy behaviours. Through the partnership, Lawtons Drugs has launched a pilot in 16 of its Halifax-Dartmouth Stores of a personalized health program called PROfile Health Club. The program uses a combination of information and rewards to promote positive health behaviours, including in the key area of adherence to medication regimes. “There is a growing amount of knowledge and supporting data to help us understand the real costs of poor medication compliance, both to the health care system and to people's health,” says Bill Redden, senior director of pharmacy services for the pharmacy chain. “Improving compliance is an important focus for us, so it made sense to look at innovative ways to address that issue.” Joining the PROfile Health Club gives patients access to information that they can tailor to their own health condition — for example, high blood pressure, diabetes or high cholesterol. They can also receive services to help them better manage their disease and live healthy lifestyles, as well as join programs to help them with medication adherence, especially those patients with multiple prescriptions. People who enrol in the club receive points for signing up and then additional points when they take advantage of services or purchase specific products. The PROfile Health Club builds on a recent Harris/Decima poll that showed that almost 70% of people would be interested in receiving rewards, such as loyalty points, for incorporating advice from their pharmacists to self-manage their health care issues. “We know our customers place a strong value on the AIR MILES program in our stores,” Mr. Redden says. “We believe that by combining these rewards with the opportunity to get their attention on education, patients will become much more engaged in taking control of their health.” The response from patients in the pilot has been positive, he adds. Lawtons Drugs has 80 stores across Atlantic Canada and hopes to eventually bring the PROfile Health Club to all of them. The first step is to thoroughly assess the pilot program for a period of about 3 months, says Mr. Redden. “We want to be able to actually measure outcomes — not only patient-behaviour outcomes with respect to medication compliance but also patient health outcomes. “We are really excited to see what benefits it produces for patients,” he adds. “This is a different approach for pharmacy. Consumers like getting rewards, yet in this case, it's not directly related to them spending any money, but provides an incentive for services that have value for people's health.”