Medication doesn't help much if you don’t take it.
Medication adherence refers to patients taking the medication prescribed by their healthcare providers at the correct dosage and timing. Medication nonadherence is an important public health concern, affecting health outcomes and overall healthcare costs for virtually all chronic diseases. Half of all patients do not take their medications as prescribed, and more than one in five new prescriptions go unfilled.
The total potential savings from medication adherence and related disease management could be $300 billion annually in the U.S. alone, which is 13% of healthcare spending.
So, what can be done? Medication adherence can be improved through better patient education, value-based insurance designs, use of patient incentives and the adoption of medication adherence systems. Systems need to be personalized—just as medicine in general needs to be personalized.
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