January 28, 2008 
I have shared other facts with you on compliance. This is a hot topic in healthcare right now. I thought pulling this one graphic out of my entry on Caremark’s trend report made sense. This really gets to the point. Take this in light of the following quote from WHO (World Health Organization) and you can understand why.
“Increasing the effectiveness of adherence interventions may have a far greater impact on the health of the population than any improvement in specific medical treatments.”
They have a good chart in the document about speciatly medications and the impact of medication management services.
Enabling Healthy Decisions 
George:
Great one in four slide to really show the impact of medication non-adherence. I would love to see the whole presentation. Is the WHO quote from their ’03 report?
Frederick, to answer your question in your first post, there is a great MEDCO funded study: Impact of Medication Adherence on Hospitalization Risk and Healthcare Cost, Medical Care, June 2005, Sokol et al.
It is an observational study of lowered healthcare costs for those who are more adherent to medication vs. those who are less adherent within diabetes, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia patients. I do not have a copy of any studies that show an improved quality of life – although I remember reading about a French study from 2004 or so that had very soft numbers pertaining to QoL.
If you cannot find the MEDCO study, let me know and I will send it to you.
Best,
Alex
alex.sicre@intelecare.com
It would be interesting to see health care cost treatment data and quality of life measures for the patients in the blue bars versus the patients in the red bars. We have to remember that the longer a patient is on medication, the greater the risk that that patient will experience a preventable medical error.
Anyone know of any studies that show a patient who is completely compliant with prescribed treatment 1) has lower health care costs than someone who drops off in six months, or 2) reports a significanlty improved quality of life?