Take as Directed

It is a common conundrum in doctor’s offices, clinics, and hospitals across the nation: patients who do not take their medication as directed. It’s true for people with high cholesterol, low calcium, diabetes, and asthma. It’s even true for patients with the AIDS virus and those who have received life-saving replacement organs...

Last month, in the New England Journal of Medicine, a Harvard health economist and the New England Healthcare Institute’s president sketched in stark detail the consequences of patients failing to take their drugs. The behavior spawns hospital stays costing $100 billion a year — stays that could have been averted. And 89,000 deaths from high blood pressure could be prevented annually if hypertension drug regimens were followed...