Poor medicine use "costing US $290 billion a year"

PharmaTimes
August 14, 2009

One third to a half of all US patients do not take their medications as prescribed, and this is costing the nation $290 billion - 13% of total health expenditures - every year, says a new report.

Such poor levels of compliance are fuelling - and are fuelled by - the rising tide of chronic disease, says the report, by researchers at the New England Healthcare Institute (NEHI). In general, people with chronic illnesses are worse at taking their medications as prescribed than those with acute conditions, and medication persistence – the length of time a patient continues to take a prescribed drug – tends to be very low among this group. As a result, they frequently experience preventable worsening of disease, making them vulnerable to serious medical risks. For example, according to one study of patients with diabetes and heart disease, mortality rates among those who did not take their medications as prescribe were nearly double the rates of those who did adhere to their regimens, the researchers report...

Link to Full Article: http://www.pharmatimes.com/WorldNews/article.aspx?id=16417