Compliance with Medication

Medication adherence is defined by the World Health Organization as "the degree to which the person’s behavior corresponds with the agreed recommendations from a health care provider." Though the terms adherence and compliance are synonymously used adherence differs from compliance. Compliance is the extent to which a patient’s behavior matches the prescriber’s advice. Compliance implies patient obedience to the physician’s authority, whereas adherence signifies that the patient and physician collaborate to improve the patient’s health by integrating the physician’s medical opinion and the patient’s lifestyle, values and preferences for care. Studies reveal that patients with chronic illnesses take only ~50% of medications prescribed for those conditions. The consequence of non adherence is waste of medication, disease progression, reduced functional abilities, a lower quality of life, increased use of medical resources such as nursing homes, hospital visits and hospital admissions. Economic studies reveal that poor adherence to prescribed regimens can result in serious health consequence which is supported by various studies. For instance in a study conducted by Anon, it was shown that the risk of hospitalization was more than double in patients with diabetes mellitus, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, or congestive heart failure who were non adherent to prescribed therapies compared with a general population. Studies conducted among Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease patients have shown that poor adherence to drug therapy and disease management leads to emergency hospitalization. All this to say that being prescribed medication is not enough. Meds, especially for Chronic conditions, must be taken in order to achieve positive results! If a patient only takes Anti-Hypertensives when their BP is high and not when it's within normal limits, it defeats the purpose, because the medication is what brought it down to normal limits!