Express Scripts looks to curb nonadherence among patients

ST. LOUIS Pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts said it has created a way to accurately predict which patients were most at risk of not adhering to their medications.

The PBM announced Monday that it had created a computer model that could predict whether a patient would fail to take medications as prescribed up to a year in advance, allowing early intervention to improve adherence. The company said patent protection for the model is pending. According to Express Scripts’ 2009 Drug Trend Report, nonadherence results in $106 billion being wasted on increased medical costs every year.

“The problem of nonadherence isn’t new -- it’s easy to walk through a hospital and identify people who would not be there if they had simply taken their medications,” Express Scripts chief medical officer Steven Miller said. “But our new predictive models allow us to do something that wasn’t possible before: better identify those patients before they run into trouble and tailor practical, patient-centric solutions that target the specific factors that put them at risk for nonadherence.”