Patients don't fill first-time prescriptions nearly one-third of the time, which makes "nonadherence" an important factor working against proper disease management.
Ways to address the problem include lowering drug costs and co-payments, as well as increasing follow-up care by prescribing physicians, according to a Canadian study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Researchers studied 15,961 patients in a primary care network of 131 physicians in Quebec. Overall, 31 percent of the 37,506 incident prescriptions were not filled.
Nonadherence was highest for expensive drugs and chronic preventive therapies for conditions such as ischemic heart disease and depression. Recent hospitalization and severe comorbid conditions also increased risk for nonadherence.
Lower odds of nonadherence prevailed among older patients, when co-payments were eliminated for low-income groups, and when patients visited their prescribing physician more often.
The study looked at prescriptions from primary care EHRs between 2006 and 2009, and linked data to drugs dispensed from community-based pharmacies.