eHealth & compliance
September 13, 2011
A NEW study published in the
Journal of General Internal
Medicine has found that electronic
record sharing between doctors
and pharmacists can help identify
patients who are not filling their
prescriptions, and could ultimately
lead to a greater understanding of
why patients skip medications or
don’t even start taking them.
The 18 month study looked at
12,000 US patients with new
prescriptions for either diabetes,
cholesterol or blood pressure and
whose prescriber was electronically
linked with their pharmacy.
The research found that 7% of
blood pressure patients did not
pick up their medication, whilst
11% skipped filling diabetes
medication scripts and 13% did not
collect medications for cholesterol.
“Given that adherence to
medications is directly associated
with improved clinical outcomes,
higher quality of life, and lower
health care costs across many
chronic conditions, it is important
to examine why some people
never start the medications their
doctors prescribe,” said study lead
author Marsha Raebel, PharmD.
“Having electronic health record
medication order entry linked to
pharmacy dispensing information
makes it much easier for clinicians
and researchers to identify
patients who are not getting their
new prescriptions filled.
Knowing the figures for not
getting scripts filled, she said the
next step is to better understand
what the barriers are to people
picking up the medications they
had been prescribed.
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 13 Sep 11To see the full newsletter, see the embedded issue below or CLICK HERE to download Pharmacy Daily from 13 Sep 11
