Jerry ElprinDoctor Appointments
August 25, 2017
Key to medication adherence: family
I recently wrote about revisiting your medication needs with your doctors from time to time to make sure you still need them in the same dosages and frequency. I also wrote on you should may sure that your meds don’t interact negatively with food. Taking the right medications, though, is only part of the equation. Taking them as prescribed – “medication adherence” it’s called – is also a factor in our own and our family’s health. It seems that between 20-30% of prescriptions are never even filled, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and upwards of 50% are not continued as prescribed.
Among the reasons:
confusion about how and when to take the meds
forgetfulness
can’t afford them
don’t believe the meds are necessary
The CDC also estimates that non-adherence to drug prescriptions is responsible for between 30-50% of treatment failure. This leads to 125,000 deaths a year and costs the U.S. healthcare industry $300 billion per year.
Another study in the American Medical Association’s Internal Medicine Journal that found that by themselves, three low-cost devices designed to help patients remember when and which meds to take did not boost prescription adherence for patients with chronic diseases. “For these devices to work,” the article said, “they may need to be administered with additional support mechanisms” – involving both medical and family caregivers. In fact, it’s believed that the lack of family or social support is predictive of nonadherence.
In the end, medication adherence is a community effort. Finding ways to support families to encourage their loved ones to take their meds would increase adherence. Though my family doesn’t keep track of my medications or adherence, I take my meds religiously. That’s just me, but I can see where the lack of family support could be a factor. So in my own case, I’ll try paying more attention to my wife’s and live-at-home son’s pill-taking and adherence (if they’ll let me).
While more health education on the importance and reasons for following medication schedules and dosages would also help with adherence, educating and involving the family will likely help to encourage your loved one to follow doctor’s orders.