Adherence key to outcomes

Community pharmacists can dramatically help their patients stick to their prescription regimens, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. The findings, reported in August in Health Affairs, also suggest that greater adherence to medications can lead to a reduction in emergency room visits and hospital admissions, thereby lowering healthcare costs for a variety of chronic conditions, including diabetes and asthma.

(For the full Diabetes Report, including charts and additional coverage, click here.)



For the study — dubbed the Pennsylvania Project — staff from Pitt’s School of Pharmacy’s Program Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU) trained 283 community pharmacists to ask customers a few quick questions about medication adherence using established survey tools. They also were taught to have a brief dialog with patients whose screening scores indicated they were at risk of not taking their medications as prescribed by their doctors.



During 2011, 29,042 people had prescriptions filled at 107 Rite Aid pharmacies that implemented the screening and brief intervention approach (SBI), and 30,454 people who went to 111 “control” pharmacies that didn’t use SBI.



For the five classes of common medications the researchers reviewed, PDC rates of 80% or better increased in the SBI group during the intervention compared with the control group, ranging from 3.1% for beta blockers to treat high blood pressure to 4.8% for oral diabetes drugs. Healthcare costs dropped by $341 annually per person for SBI patients taking oral diabetes drugs and by $241 for SBI patients taking statins to lower cholesterol.