Accessible Prescription Labels: Sen. Markey and ...

RantWoman is assembling strands of information and figuring out how she can get better compensated for insights. So grab the thoughts while they are fresh and free or leave a comment if you want RantWoman to elaborate in terms that your organization can use.

RantWoman loves the phrase best practices. RantWoman has work background that combines IT, language access, health insurance and clinical or healthcare data. So RantWoman is serious, and this despite having a giant RantWoman electronic footprint and some past job experience that involves RantWoman not knowing very well how to work with the phrase "reasonable accommodations" and lots of current practice figuring out what reasonable accommodations means in different situations.

With that intro, RantWoman notes with great interest the continuing spread of interest in accessible prescription labels and is very interested in these comments from the office of Senator Markey, D, MA

http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senator-markey-queries-pharmacies-on-prescription-drug-labeling-to-aid-the-blind-and-visually-impaired

RantWoman thanks Sen. Markey, the American Council of the Blind, and other groups for work over quite awhile about accessible labelling. And RantWoman needs to invoke assorted insights from life experience.

First, a small digression: providing language access to customers who do not speak language is also part of best practices and legal compliance. To brief, RantWoman knows there are blind people who need accessible labelling in other langueages because she interprets for them, meets them through a family religious affiliation, and recognizes them in her neighborhood. So RantWoman always mentions a resources called DiversityRX http://www.diversityrx.org/resources and to encourage organizations to include language access considerations as well as label accessibility when working on best practices.

Second, RantWoman thinks Sen.Markey probably understates the number of people who can benefit from accessible labels. Blind people have all the same realities as other people including care of aging elders, care of children. RantWoman remembers a blind lawyer talking about how he and his blind wife were managing care for an aging mother with macular degeneration. RantWoman assumes all 3 blind people would be counted by Sen. Markey's estimate but what if the aging mother had dementia instead of macular degeneration. RantWoman also knows a number of blind parents who manage prescriptions for their sighted children. RantWoman also knows a lot of people who are not blind but for various reasons work better with audio information than with reading text. RantWoman suggests that organizations such as insurance companies think about the payoff for these people as well as for the blind.

Insurance companies?

RantWoman knows from past work in the health insurance / HMO business that insurance providers contract with pharmacies the same way they contract with physicians and other providers.

What if someone's insurance plan does not cover one of the pharmacies which already provide labels?

Should government and private insurance providers be required to consider the availability of accessible labelling as they make decisions about which pharmacies to contract with?

Should accessible labelling just become a ubiquitous practice?

RantWoman can mumble further about cost and outcome impacts of people being able better to manage their prescriptions. RantWoman CAN mumble in this direction, but RantWoman thinks doing that in detail is not soemthing she wants to do as "free consulting."

Word!