Does mHealth increase adherence to medication?
A terminology overview It is well known that patient adherence to appropriately prescribed medications is essential for treatment efficacy and positive therapeutic outcomes. It is also understood that patients who are prescribed medications do not necessarily take them as prescribed. Indeed, variation in patients' medicat …
How to improve medication adherence?
Adherence to antipsychotic medication in indigenous patients with schizophrenia Not only is it less expensive than current regimens, but it is also expected to improve outcomes and potentially decrease deaths due to better adherence to treatment and reduced loss to follow-up. Rapid diagnostic test and shorter, cheaper treatment signal new hope
Can mHealth help with medication adherence?
The word adherence means to stick to or stay with something. Adherence is very important when taking your HIV medications. Taking them at the right time every day, as prescribed, is important to staying healthy. ART: ART stands for anti-retroviral therapy, and …
Can home delivery Meds improve adherence?
The WHO defines adherence to long-term therapy as “the extent to which a person's behavior—taking medication, following a diet, and/or executing lifestyle changes—corresponds Article Highlights Approximately 50% of patients do not take medications as prescribed Medication adherence is not exclusively the responsibility of the patient
What does adherence mean in healthcare?
Adherence has been defined as “the extent to which a person's behaviour, taking medication, following a diet, and/or executing lifestyle changes, corresponds with agreed recommendations from a health care provider”.
What is adherence and why is it important?
Avoiding any drug interactions. Adherence is the most important thing you have to think about when you start treatment. It will make sure that all the drugs in your combination are at high enough levels to control HIV for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If these levels drop too low there is a risk of drug resistance.
How do you measure adherence to treatment?
Medication adherence can be measured by several methods, including (a) self-report questionnaires or structured interviews, (b) therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM), (c) electronic devices, and (d) pick-up/refill rates.Jul 22, 2019
Why is adherence to treatment important?
Taking your medicine as prescribed or medication adherence is important for controlling chronic conditions, treating temporary conditions, and overall long-term health and well-being. A personal connection with your health-care provider or pharmacist is an important part of medication adherence.Feb 16, 2016
What is adherence to antiretroviral therapy?
Adherence is defined as a patient's ability to follow a treatment plan, take medications at prescribed times and frequencies, and follow restrictions regarding food and other medications.
What adherence involves?
Adherence means taking your drugs exactly as prescribed. This includes taking them at the right time. It also includes following any special diet restrictions.Aug 1, 2021
How do you find adherence?
Medication adherence can be measured by several methods: self-report questionnaires (structured interviews), TDM, electronic devices and pick-up/refill rates. It is recommended to assess adherence by combining multiple adherence methods, while keeping their individual (dis)advantages in mind.Jul 22, 2019
How can pharmacists improve adherence?
5 Ways Pharmacists Can Improve Medication AdherenceUse Kitchen Table Consults. ... Improve Pharmacy Work Flow. ... Simplify Patients' Medications. ... Identify Reasons for Medication Nonadherence. ... Ask Patients Specific Questions About Their Medication.Sep 16, 2015
What is the gold standard for measuring adherence?
Adherence is commonly assessed using pill counts, self-report or electronic monitoring, with the latter widely considered the 'gold standard'. We assessed the concordance of these three methods in a sample of 52 elderly patients with heart failure over a six-week period.Nov 5, 2010
Is adherence and compliance the same?
Compliance is a passive behavior in which a patient is following a list of instructions from the doctor. Adherence is a more positive, proactive behavior, which results in a lifestyle change by the patient, who must follow a daily regimen such as wearing a prescribed brace.Oct 20, 2016
Why do patients not adhere to medication?
The most common reasons for patient non-compliance to medications are intentional and include: high drug costs, fear of adverse events, being prescribed multiple medications, and experiencing either instant relief or medication ineffectiveness leading to self-discontinuation of medications.Oct 24, 2018
How can medication adherence be improved in the elderly?
Combatting Medication NonadherenceReduce the number of medications. ... Encourage patients to bring medications to appointments. ... Reduce the number of pharmacies. ... Discuss cost frequently. ... Watch for warning signs. ... Leverage technology to help patients in between appointments.Feb 6, 2020
compliance
The following by a patient of a recommended course of treatment—e.g., taking all prescribed medications, adhering to a recommended diet and exercise plan and reducing or eliminating alcohol or tobacco intake, and so on.
adherence to treatment
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Is adherence to medication better than improvement?
Increasing adherence may have a greater effect on health than improvements in specific medical therapy. Medication-taking behavior is complex and involves patient, physician, and process components. Identification of nonadherence is challenging and requires specific interviewing skills.
How many people do not take their medications?
Although these medications are effective in combating disease, their full benefits are often not realized because approximately 50% of patients do not take their medications as prescribed.
Is mental illness a priority?
Recognizing and treating mental illness must be a priority when treating patients for other chronic conditions such as CVD. Often, successful treatment of patients' coexisting illnesses depends on first treating any underlying mental illness. Consideration of patients' economic status is of paramount importance.
Why is medication nonadherence important?
Medication nonadherence is a growing concern to clinicians, healthcare systems, and other stakeholders (eg, payers) because of mounting evidence that it is prevalent and associated with adverse outcomes and higher costs of care.
What is the difference between adherence and persistence?
Although conceptually similar, adherence refers to the intensity of drug use during the duration of therapy, whereas persistence refers to the overall duration of drug therapy. 3,4. Medication adherence is a growing concern ...
How successful are unimodal interventions?
To date, interventions targeting medication adherence have produced only modest success. In general, unimodal interventions have been less successful than multimodal interventions, because the reasons for nonadherence are often multifactorial. 67–72 Unimodal interventions that have demonstrated some success include those that reduced the number of daily doses of medications, used motivational strategies, packaged medications into special containers (eg, pill boxes or blister packs), provided more convenient care, educated patients, or involved monitoring and feedback. For example, Smith et al 73 recently published findings of a cluster randomized trial in 4 geographically dispersed health maintenance organizations that sent informational mailings on β-blocker therapy to patients recently discharged for acute myocardial infarction and prescribed β-blockers. The intervention resulted in an absolute increase of 4.3% of days covered per month for β-blocker medications compared with usual-care patients and a 17% relative increase in the likelihood of being adherent to β-blockers. Although the study findings are positive, it is unclear whether the modest improvement in adherence will translate into differences in clinical outcomes.
Is adherence to cardiovascular medications associated with hospitalization?
They found that adherence to cardiovascular medications was not associated with hospitalization for lung, prostate, or breast cancer and concluded that the benefit of adherence was directly related to the cardiovascular medication rather than an epiphenomenon of a healthy adherer effect.
What is adherence?
Adherence is a word used to describe taking your drugs exactly as prescribed. This includes:
How much is enough?
Aiming to take every dose – or almost 100% – is still the best goal. This is because getting into a good habit early will mean you miss less doses in the long run. The structure of a fixed routine will help.
What is considered nonadherent medication?
If patients take less than 80% of their prescribed medication (s), they are considered nonadherent.". "Medication adherence occurs when a patient takes their medications according to the prescribed dosage, time, frequency, and direction.".
What is limited health literacy?
Limited health literacy is associated with medication nonadherence (in addition to a slew of other wellness and financial challenges). When patients are unable to grasp critical concepts, such as how to fill a medication, how to take a medication, when to take a medication, how much of a medication to take, and when and how to refill a medication, ...
How many prescriptions are never filled?
In the United States, while about 4 billion prescriptions are written annually, roughly one in five new prescriptions are never filled. For those filled, only about half are taken ...
What is medication adherence?
The American Pharmacists Association says medication adherence is "… the extent to which a patient's behavior ( e.g., taking medications with respect to timing, dosage, and frequency) corresponds with agreed-upon recommendations from a healthcare provider.". Finally, Pharmacy Times says medication adherence is "… the extent to which patients take ...
How much has GoodRx saved?
GoodRx has been making headlines for its prescription discount app. The company reports that the app has saved 10 million-plus consumers more than $14 billion since 2011. Finally, clinicians should explore the availability of tools and technology that can assist them in helping their patients maintain adherence.
What is Meds 360?
Meds 360° is a resource clinicians and organizations nationwide are finding invaluable in their efforts to provide safe, high-quality care that also contributes to cost reduction and better achieves the objectives of value-based healthcare.
What are the challenges of polypharmacy?
These include the complex dosing schedule, instruction confusion, multiple side effects, and greater expenses.
What is compliance in medical terms?
Compliance is a passive behavior in which a patient is following a list of instructions from the doctor.". The article continues, noting, "Adherence is a more positive, proactive behavior, which results in a lifestyle change by the patient, who must follow a daily regimen, such as wearing a prescribed brace.
What are the services that patients are expected to continue treatment?
These can include specialists, imaging, rehabilitation, and laboratories. If traveling to new providers and organizations proves difficult, patients may elect not to do so.
Why do patients try to alter how they approach treatment?
For example, if patients are unhappy with a treatment's effects — whether due to limited signs of improvement, slower improvement than desired, or unexpected side effects — they may try to alter how they approach treatment. This can also occur when patients experience improvements.
Methodology of Assessing Medication Adherence
- There are many different methods for assessing adherence to medications. Osterberg et al5 categorized these methods as either direct or indirect. Direct methods include directly observed therapy, measurement of the level of medicine or metabolite in blood, and measurement of the biological marker in blood.5Although these direct methods are considered to be more robust tha…
Prevalence of Medication Nonadherence
- Nonadherence to medications is common for patients with cardiovascular diseases. After acute myocardial infarction hospitalization, Jackevicius et al21 found that almost one fourth of patients (≈24%) did not even fill their cardiac medications by day 7 of discharge. Among patients discharged with prescriptions for aspirin, statin, and β-blockers after acute myocardial infarction…
Association Between Medication Adherence and Outcomes
- Many observational studies have evaluated the association between medication adherence and outcomes. In general, these studies have focused on medications that have already been demonstrated in clinical trials to be efficacious and therefore are trying to assess the effectiveness of these medications in routine clinical practice. Pharmacy refill data and patient s…
Healthy Adherer Effect
- Although the association between medication nonadherence and adverse outcomes has been demonstrated in many observational studies, some concern has been raised that this association may be, at least in part, related to a “healthy adherer” effect.33 The healthy adherer effect implies that the lower risk of adverse outcomes associated with adherence may be a surrogate marker f…
Association Between Medication Adherence and Costs
- Surprisingly little is known about the association between medication adherence and healthcare costs in cardiovascular populations. Sokol et al39 reported that greater adherence to medications for chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hypercholesterolemia, and heart failure was associated with higher medication costs but lower nonmedication medical costs, yie…
Patterns and Reasons For Medication Nonadherence
- The reasons for poor medication adherence are often multifactorial. Nonadherence to medications can be intentional or nonintentional. Intentional nonadherence is an active process whereby the patient chooses to deviate from the treatment regimen.46 This may be a rational decision process in which the individual weighs the risk and benefits of treatment against any a…
Interventions to Improve Medication Adherence
- To date, interventions targeting medication adherence have produced only modest success. In general, unimodal interventions have been less successful than multimodal interventions, because the reasons for nonadherence are often multifactorial.67–72 Unimodal interventions that have demonstrated some success include those that reduced the number of daily doses of med…
Research and Clinical Implications
- There have been great strides made toward a better understanding of medication adherence and its impact in clinical practice; however, more research is needed to address critical issues in the field. One of these issues is coming to a consensus on how to uniformly report measures of medication adherence and persistence. Because of the variety of data sources and adherence …
Conclusions
- Building on recent improvements in the prescription of indicated cardiovascular medication to patients, the next step is to improve adherence to prescribed medications.78 Nonadherence to medications is common and is associated with adverse outcomes. Nonadherence is not solely a patient problem but is impacted by both care providers and the healthcare system. As the first s…