Medication Adherence

In the realm of healthcare, adherence is the collaborative, active, and voluntary engagement of patients with a course of action agreed upon by them and their medical provider, all to produce a positive therapeutic result.¹

Medication adherence, then, is the autonomous choice by a patient to stick to a plan of prescription medications created by their doctors. Many factors influence medication adherence, including, but not limited to:

• Social support
• High costs
• Low health literacy
• Depression²
• Level of income and one’s socioeconomic status^3–5

Medication nonadherence can be broken down into two groups:

• Primary nonadherence: The medication isn’t filled by the pharmacy or picked up by the patient
• Secondary nonadherence: A patient, over time, starts to miss doses, prematurely stops the therapeutic course of action, or takes incorrect doses.⁶

The consequences of not following a medication regimen can be immense and lead to poor health outcomes like high patient morbidity or mortality.² In addition to consequences to one’s health, medication nonadherence has significant public costs: in 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calculated that medication nonadherence among those with chronic diseases costs $300 billion USD each year in avoidable costs.⁷

At a more macro level, nonadherence also results in higher costs for individuals. For example, those with cardiac disease who stick to their therapeutic strategies spend on average $8,881 less for medical needs per year than their non-adhering counterparts.⁵