Systematic review of the impact of medication synchronization on healthcare utilization, economic, clinical, and humanistic outcomes

Medication synchronization (med‐sync) or appointment‐based medication synchronization (ABMS) programs allow patients to have their chronic medication refills aligned to one pickup day. For patients on multiple chronic medications, it provides a more manageable way of picking up those medications. The objective of the study was to systematically characterize literature describing economic and healthcare utilization, clinical, and humanistic outcomes for patients enrolled in med‐sync. A literature search was conducted on PubMed, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCO), EMBASE (Elsevier), and Cochrane Library. Studies were included if they were conducted at a pharmacy in the United States, between January 2008 and October 2022, and evaluated the impact of med‐sync on at least one of the four outcomes of interest (utilization, economic, clinical, and humanistic). The title and abstracts were screened, followed by a full‐text review and final data extraction by two researchers. A data extraction template and Cochrane risk of bias tool were used for data collection and quality assessments, respectively. The search resulted in 1617 studies and finally, 27 studies were included in the systematic review. All studies included patients enrolled in either ABMS, med‐sync, or in conjunction with other pharmacy services. Across all studies evaluating medication adherence, proportion of days covered (PDC) increased. All studies that administered patient surveys showed a majority of patients were satisfied with their med‐sync program. One study showed a reduction in healthcare utilization and costs, while another study indicated no change. Med‐sync programs have shown clinical outcomes, specifically to improve adherence in patients taking chronic medications. In terms of humanistic outcomes, patient surveys have shown high rates of satisfaction with med‐sync programs. Additional studies are needed to determine if med‐sync can lead to improvements in healthcare utilization and cost outcomes.