Top 3 Benefits of Using an Online Supplement Prescribing Platform

For the last five years, online supplement prescribing platforms have partnered with CharmHealth to streamline supplement prescribing and patient care via its integration. Continue reading to learn how online supplement prescribing platforms can help you optimize your practice.
 
1. Recommend High-quality Dietary Supplements
Patient health and safety are top priorities for all practitioners. We are constantly reminded of how prevalent and dangerous “fake” supplements are. Furthermore, it can be challenging to discern safe, high-quality supplements from counterfeit products.   
 
The following are four key considerations when looking for safe, high-quality supplements:
1. Testing: Does the manufacturer conduct routine testing of their products, and are those results available to consumers?
2. Third-party certifications: Is the product evaluated by a third-party organization?
3. Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs): Does the manufacturer produce supplements that are in accordance with cGMPs?
4. Audits: Does the manufacturer have an internal and external audit program to confirm that manufacturing, packaging, labeling, and storing practices are properly maintained?
 
2. Improve Patient Treatment Adherence
Studies have shown that over 15% of patients are non-adherent to new treatment plans. Low treatment adherence limits the effective management and treatment of chronic conditions, creates a significant healthcare burden, increases costs to the healthcare system, and leads to poor patient outcomes.
 
The following are four strategies to help patients follow their treatment plans:
1. Establish trust: A positive practitioner-patient relationship can help build trust in a practitioner’s recommendations.
2. Use a staged approach: Prioritizing or limiting the number of recommendations in a treatment plan can help the patient feel less overwhelmed.
3. Meet them where they are: If a patient is not ready to make big life changes, work with them to identify a first step to make the treatment plan more approachable.
4. Keep it simple: Similarly to using a staged approach, simplifying treatment plans can reduce overwhelm and enhance adherence.
 
3. Empower Patients with High-quality Health Education Resources
Integrative medicine practitioners utilize health education to empower their patients. However, studies have shown over 40% of Americans struggle to find, understand, and/or apply health information (low health literacy).
 
While offering health literacy-friendly educational materials does not eliminate low health literacy, it can improve patient comprehension and empower them to be active participants in their healthcare. The following four considerations can help you create or curate health literacy-friendly educational materials:
1. Get to know your patient population: In order to create or provide health literacy-friendly and culturally appropriate educational materials, you must first understand who makes up your patient population.
2. Conduct a needs assessment: Determine your patients’ educational barriers, needs, and preferences.
3. Use health literacy tools to create educational materials: Consider using the CDC’s guide Simply put: A guide for creating easy-to-understand materials to create your educational materials.
4. Test your educational materials: Whenever possible, evaluate your educational materials using state-of-the-art assessment tools (e.g., readability formulas, understandability assessments) and patient feedback.
 
The Bottom Line
Online supplement prescribing platforms like Fullscript can help you optimize your practice by offering high-quality supplements, as well as treatment adherence and health literacy tools.