"Adherence" is the technical term used by the pharma industry for "following doctor's orders" about taking medication. NEHI suggests many reasons for the poor "adherence" behavior of Americans, including:
- cost
- side effects
- the challenge of managing multiple prescriptions (polypharmacy)
- patients’ understanding of their disease
- forgetfulness
- cultural and belief systems
- imperfect drug regimens
- patients’ ability to navigate the health care system
- cognitive impairments
- a reduced sense of urgency due to asymptomatic conditions
Not to mention the roadblock to increased pharma industry profits!
There have been many strategies to overcome poor adherence. Drug companies, for example, have incentive programs that include coupons for the partial or total re-imbursement of copayments.
A new strategy embraced by pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies and insurers, reported today in the New York Times, is a lottery whereby patients can win cash for taking their medication! "In a Philadelphia program people prescribed warfarin, an anti-blood-clot medication, can win $10 or $100 each day they take the drug," reported the NYT (see "Cash Helps the Medicine Go Down"). The program uses a computerized pillbox to record if patients took the medicine and whether they won that day.
First of all, no computerized pillbox can actually know if patients swallowed the pill or merely threw it down the drain, which they might do if non-adherence was due primarily to bad side effects. For more about electronic pill boxes, see, "Can an In-home Electronic Pillbox Solve Our Medication Error Problem?"
You can, however, place an electronic collar around patients' necks and detect if specially-designed pills were actually swallowed. As if that will ever happen! (See "Invasive Compliance: A Bitter Pill to Swallow.")
Aside from gaming the system by throwing the pill down the drain, the lottery idea is intriguing. It is well-suited to the American psyche, which now expects bad behavior to be rewarded (as in getting great refinancing deals and government subsidies when you decide not to make your monthly mortgage payments). You can also look at this as rewarding good behavior, except I suspect that those patients who prudently have taken their medication all along are not included in such incentive programs.
I am waiting for such a program to be offered to the millions of men who suffer from erectile dysfunction and who "forget" to take their daily dose of Cialis! When that happens, I'll be the first to sign up!
I think our panel at the eyeforpharma Patient Adherence event tomorrow (http://www.eyeforpharma.com/patientadherence/) should discuss this and report back! ;-)
ReplyDeleteNot familiar with any lottery related adherence schemes over here in Europe..
I think this happen in all country that patients not take their medicines as prescribed by the doctor.
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