Drug Adherence Throwdown: Disruptive Women Take on America’s Other Drug Problem
October 12th, 2009
It has been estimated that 3 out of 4 people report that they do not take their medications as directed, resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars annually in related medical costs and an enormous number of hospital admissions and readmissions.
The reasons for this are complex and varied. This is a particularly vexing challenge for young, chronically ill patients, for people with mental health diagnoses and for the elderly who may suffer from memory impairment. Anyone on a complicated drug regimen knows how committed one must be to remain adherent.
For some, cost is an issue while for others side effects can be unpleasant, travelling can compromise the best of intentions as can the need for refrigeration when none is available. Some patients must take some drugs on an empty stomach and others on a full stomach. Some patients are simply not ready to accept they have a serious, or lifelong illness. It is complicated.
Because the implications, both clinical as well as financial, are significant, we have invited a number of our Disruptive Women bloggers, as well as some other experts in the field, to join us in a series of policy posts on this critically important issue.
Beginning next week, on October 19th, we will launch our Drug Adherence series which will analyze this challenge from a number of perspectives: patients, providers, researchers. In addition, we will also offer innovative solutions.
At the completion of this series, we will compile all the posts into an e-book, just as we did when we tackled the issue of Comparative Effectiveness Research and created our Comparative Effectiveness Research e-book.
If you or someone you help care for has experiences you would like to share, or you have research, solutions and other thoughts on this topic, I hope you will share them with us.
Related posts:
October 13th, 2009 at 7:21 am
HI Robin. If you’d like to gather some of these through my blogtalkradio show, I’d like to help bring women in from Real Women on Heath! I have 700 members on Linked In and this could be interesting. Just let me know!
October 13th, 2009 at 8:17 am
Medication adherence from the patient’s perspective has been the most frequently viewed post on my blog — DCPatient, An Impatient Patient’s An Impatient Patient’s Perspective on Health Care Today blogged live from Washington DC. http://www.dcpatient.us
One of the issues raised recently was that there is very little research on gender-based barriers to medication adherence. That is a ripe area moving forward.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:34 am
That’s a key issue: gender-based barriers to medication adherence. And, since gender-based is different from sex-based research, we have to look at how women make decisions based on our number one instinct: caregiving – and how the natural tendency to care for others impacts how we decide to (or not decide to) care for ourselves. Great opportunity to identify how companies and organizations can intervene with touchpoints across the multi-dimensional aspects of women’s lives. Also, what I’m finding in speaking with women is an overall distrust of “authority” that comes from “medication adherence” and that includes companies that have traditionally not served women well. We haven’t even touched on how gender impacts finances..and ability to pay for medications over the required period of time. If women have family that needs resources, the money will come out of their own needs.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Thanks very much for the suggestions and input. We will absolutely follow up. Appreciate the important insights.