Techs on the Front Lines: Supporting Patients’ Medication Adherence

With medication regimens growing more complex and pharmacies facing challenges such as staffing shortages and added corporate initiatives, pharmacy technicians play a critical role in supporting patient adherence and reinforcing pharmacists’ counseling efforts. Leveraging pharmacy technicians to impact the pharmacy operationally and relationally can significantly improve patient outcomes.

Understanding Medication Adherence

Medication nonadherence remains one of the most significant challenges in health care, with nearly 50% of patients with chronic conditions not taking medications as prescribed.¹ Patients face challenges such as cost concerns, confusing instructions, adverse effects, and forgetfulness, which may lead to difficulty taking medications as prescribed. For chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, and asthma, missed doses can lead to complications, hospitalizations, and reduced quality of life.

Pharmacy technicians are in a unique position to identify early warning signs of nonadherence, including late refills, prescriptions that are not picked up, patient or caretaker confusion, cost-related hesitation, and additional issues that present themselves at time of pickup. Recognizing these signals allows technicians to proactively engage patients and alert the pharmacist when clinical intervention is needed.

The Technician’s Role in Supporting Adherence

Pharmacy technicians’ role is not to provide clinical counseling, which is done solely by a licensed pharmacist. However, they can support adherence in several meaningful ways.

Provide a strong drop-off and pickup experience. Technicians should maintain clear communication at drop-off and pickup to build patients’ trust and eliminate any confusion. By confirming patient information and identifying new prescriptions, technicians ensure pharmacists’ counseling opportunities are not missed.

Facilitate pharmacist counseling. Pharmacy technicians should identify new prescriptions at pickup and alert pharmacists to any uncertainty patients may have. Examples might include flagging the prescription, telling the patient that a pharmacist will be right with them to discuss it, and making notations in the computer system. By providing clear communication and proper documentation, technicians are improving adherence with every pickup transaction.

Address costs and access barriers. Pharmacy technicians can and should be the subject experts on handling insurance adjudication and discount programs. Although this can be challenging for new and part-time pharmacy technicians, knowing the adjudication process and discount programs will help patients improve affordability and, therefore, adherence.

Promote medication synchronization and reminders. Pharmacy technicians play a proactive role in offering refill reminders and synchronization programs. In many instances, asking patients whether they want to be placed on the automated refill list and ensuring communication information is up to date can reduce medication nonadherence.

Recognizing Boundaries While Maximizing Influence

Pharmacy technicians must remain within their scope of practice. While clinical counseling and therapeutic recommendations are the responsibility of pharmacists, technicians can recognize those patients who would benefit from speaking with the pharmacist. By being alert to these patients, the technician is the first line of defense in identifying them.

Conclusion

Pharmacy technicians play a crucial role in the complex pharmacy environment. Technicians are workflow managers, relationship builders, access facilitators, and adherence champions. By resolving insurance claims, making refill reminder calls, providing referrals for pharmacist counseling, and all other things pharmacy technicians do, they contribute to the safe and effective medication use for patients.

About the Author

Dimitrios Papadopoulos, MBA, RPHT, CPhT, In-D, is a pharmacy technician with nearly 20 years in the pharmacy field. He is licensed in Florida and Nevada and is currently practicing as a licensed pharmacy technician in Nevada.

REFERENCE

Pharmacy-based interventions to improve medication adherence. CDC. May 15, 2024. Accessed April 8, 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/cardiovascular-resources/php/medication-adherence/