NOTE: This blog post was updated at the bottom on November 24, 2025 with an introductory overview of VytlOne’s readmission reduction program — Impact®.
Benefits of a Meds To Beds Program: Overview
On a purely practical level, a well-managed bedside prescription delivery program can improve health system revenue.
On the human level, Meds To Beds is more than a tangible sign of your system’s care of, and for, the individuals & families you treat. It’s your first line of offense in ensuring patients follow prescription protocols after they’ve left your care — significantly decreasing the likelihood of readmission while, in the process, improving patient satisfaction and pharmacy revenues.
It’s a transitional care program which health systems fail to implement, as a rule, because of the costs of staffing and administrations. Costs which, in our experience, are more than offset by revenues. In one Mississippi health system alone, VytlOne filled over 18,000 discharge prescriptions in just 12 months — during which time, pharmacy revenues increased 125% and readmissions decreased 79%.
How a good Meds To Beds Program works
First, a hospital’s retail pharmacy staff must commit to partner with its case management teams, nurses and physicians to implement a cohesive medication treatment plan for patients transitioning from hospital to home. That commitment includes the pharmacy staff performing the work necessary to enhance a health system’s current efforts, so there’s never any added burden on the hospital’s providers, nurses and staff.
Next, when pharmacy staff deliver prescriptions bedside to patients, they should ensure that a pharmacist is available to carefully review prescription protocols, and any issues that could compromise patient willingness (or ability) to maintain prescription compliance, post-discharge.
Once patients accept their prescriptions and understand how to maintain compliance, your meds to beds program should pass-off the job of continued patient contact to a readmission risk reduction program.
How Meds To Beds benefits your 340B drug program
Bedside prescription delivery is one of, if not the, single most effective methods for ensuring that patient prescriptions are captured before they leave your care.
In other words, your Meds To Beds program should not only support your mission of maximizing patient care, compliance and satisfaction while minimizing readmissions, it should serve as a funnel for directing patients into your 340B program. This role is particularly significant in light of recent aggressive manufacturer efforts to minimize the number of 340B-eligible pharmacies that hospitals can utilize in their 340B drug programs.
The current tactic many manufacturers have undertaken is to limit their support of eligible entities’ contract pharmacies to one per hospital — then fight HRSA efforts to overturn those limits, through protracted legal battles (which, manufacturers have determined, is less costly than upholding their legal obligation to fully support the 340B program).
How Meds To Beds benefits your 340B patients
In addition to the benefits mentioned above, patients entered into the proverbial 340B program “funnel” are afforded superior ongoing professional care and support, post-discharge. At the same time, hospitals with extensive contract pharmacy networks offer patients more choices in filling their prescriptions.
Statistical research conclusively demonstrates that two of the primary reasons behind patient non-compliance are lack of education & understanding, and lack of access (both financial and “locational”) to pharmacies. Which is why many 340B-eligible entities supplement their Meds To Beds programs by offering financially-challenged patients home delivery and prescription discounts. In short, those entities have determined that the costs of those additional services are far outweighed by the benefits of superior post-discharge care and the savings that come with dramatic reductions in readmissions.
According to a 2020 study published by Frontiers In Public Health, , Meds To Beds programs “have been shown to significantly reduce 30-day hospital readmissions (in one study the reduction was greater among older adult patients) (1) and emergency department visits. These programs increase the number of patients actually obtaining their discharge medications by removing common barriers related to payment and transportation, increase patient satisfaction, and reduce costs.”
The study cited a Meds To Beds program implemented at Vanderbilt University, which “appealed to physicians because they believed it provided their patients with important services such as education about their medications and logistical or financial assistance in getting their medications. This staff-level desire to provide quality care interacted with the system-level desire to reduce readmissions.”
According to another study, published by PharmacyToday in 2016, “One of the greatest advantages of the bedside delivery program is having direct access to prescribers so that questions about prescriptions can be clarified quickly. [One participating pharmacist] noted that patients love the program because it increases their satisfaction with the hospital experience:
“Bedside delivery means that a new mom and dad can spend valuable hours with their new addition. For the daughter or son of a heart attack patient, it means that they can have peace of mind that their parent is going home on medications that will help keep them healthy for many years to come. Bedside delivery is the missing link in the transition of care from the hospital to home.’”
Introducing VytlOne’s Impact® program
Taking patient readmission reduction to another level
In late 2023, we took the fundamental components of our Meds To Beds program and developed a 30-day readmission reduction program that employes an onsite clinical pharmacist in collaboration with hospitals’ nursing teams. The program operates as a separate service from Meds To Beds, but it can easily work in collaboration with MTB.
Our pilot Impact® program (at South Carolina’s Conway Medical Center) initially targeted multi-visit patients (MVPs). However, it’s equally effective with high-risk single-visit patients. In fact, the MVP program was so successful that we added diabetics to our target group — offering post-discharge support to any patients with an A1C of 7 or higher, and to new diabetic patients.
Enrolling readmission reduction-eligible patients
The Impact® program starts with a bedside consultation for eligible patients with our clinical pharmacist, who conducts a Comprehensive Medication review — and offers patients Meds To Beds delivery. This ensures that patients leave with both the medication and the knowledge they need to ensure a successful transition from hospital to home.
Follow-up patient support, post-discharge
Over the course of the first month after they’re discharged, an Impact Care Coordinator / nurse will reach out to enrolled patients at least four times. In addition to ensuring that they have all their medications, and are following their prescription protocols, care coordinators will ask questions specific to their disease states.
Addressing social factors contributing to readmission
Lack of access to transportation can be a huge contributor to a health system’s readmission rates. When CMC patients can’t get to their doctor’s appointments, we provide rides using Uber Health — which typically costs $12 – $30 per patient. Many other patients are readmitted after discharge because they cannot afford their prescriptions. VytlOne also offers a variety of Prescription Payment Assistance options.
Impact’s readmission reduction data platform
Using VytlOne’s Impact® data platform, all patient communications, and the all data we collect, are uploaded into our secure database — then passed-along to our clinical pharmacist for any necessary follow-ups.
By the numbers: Readmission reduction results
When our program launched, CMC’s health system had a baseline 47% readmission rate among MVP patients with three or more encounters. After 15 months, our program had served 474 participants — and achieved a readmission rate of just 10.1%. Readmissions dropped 77% among patients with 3 or more encounters, and 93% among patients with uncontrolled A1C.
As a result of the program, CMC saved $1.25 million (based on a $15,200 readmission cost-per-patient cited in a 2018 study conducted by the National Institutes Of Health). What’s more, patient satisfaction ratings with the program was 9.77 out of 10 — nearly 50% higher than the national average of 6.6 for health system Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey (HCAHPS) scores.
For Further Reading
How To Achieve Readmission Reduction, One Patient At A Time
How One Clinical Pharmacist Can Impact Hospital Readmissions
To learn how you can optimize 340B savings with
Meds To Beds & Readmission Reduction —
— contact Howard Hall. howard.hall@vytlone.com | 214.808.2700
