A study by Kaiser Permanente of the medical records of 8,454 women, ages 55 years or older shows that nearly 30 percent of women failed to pick up their bisphosphonate prescriptions, a medication that is most commonly used to treat osteoporosis and similar bone diseases.
The study, published last week in the journal Osteoporosis International, showed that failure to pick up prescribed medications, also known as primary nonadherence can lead to increased risk of fractures in this patient population.
The Kaiser researchers found that older women who had used the emergency department in the past years were less likely to pick up their bisphosphonate prescriptions, while women who were taking other prescription medications and those who had been hospitalized in the past years were more likely than average to pick up their prescritiptions.
“Although bisphosphonates have been proven to reduce the risk of osteoporotic fracture, low adherence to these medications is common, which contributes to serious and costly health problems,” said Kristi Reynolds, research scientist at Kaiser Permanente and lead author of the study in a press release. “This study simultaneously examined patient and prescribing provider characteristics and helped identify certain factors associated with why patients failed to pick up their new prescriptions.”
One factor that increased adherence was the relative experience of the prescribing physician, the study noted. Women who received a bisphosphonate prescription from a physician who had practiced for 10 or more years at Kaiser Permanente were more likely to pick up their prescriptions than those who received their prescription from a doctor with less than 10 years experience.
Medication non-adherence is a significant health problem in this country with some estimates indicating that as many as one-in-three patients who are given a prescription fail to fill it. Further, nearly three-quarters of all people do not take their prescription medications according to the providers’ orders.
In all, nonadherence causes as many as 125,000 deaths yearly and costs the healthcare system nearly $300 billion per year.
“These findings suggest that healthcare providers must do a better job of identifying barriers and developing interventions that address the individual patient’s needs and concerns at the time the prescription is ordered,” Reynolds added. “The use of electronic health records, like the system in place at Kaiser Permanente, has helped us better understand and address primary nonadherence, which has historically been difficult to identify.”
In the U.S. roughly 10 million people have osteoporosis and another 34 million are considered at risk of developing the disease, according to figures from the National Osteoporosis Foundation.