What do you think is the most common topic that comes up when physicians complain about their patients? According to a 2011 Consumer Reports survey of physicians, noncompliance with medication and other treatment recommendations was number one.
I can understand that. Non-adherence is a demoralizing problem for physicians. Think of all that effort on diagnosis, clinical decision-making, and education going to waste because the patient decides not to fill the prescription, or quits after a few weeks, or takes it only sporadically. As former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop famously quipped, “drugs don’t work in patients who don’t take them.”
It turns out that not only does non-adherence rank as physicians’ number one complaint, it is also one of healthcare’s number one problems.
In 2009 the New England Healthcare Institute estimated that poor compliance with prescription medication is the root cause of $290 billion in “otherwise avoidable medical spending” in the US per year. That’s a staggering number, but it makes sense if you think about it.
Heart attacks and strokes, for example, are very expensive, but largely avoidable if you control known risk factors with lifestyle modifications and medications as needed (which are dirt cheap by comparison to other popular drugs).
