Using Previous Medication Adherence to Predict Future Adherence

Medication nonadherence is a major public health problem. On average, up to 50% of patients do not adhere to their prescribed therapies. Less than half of patients persist with cardiovascular drugs for a year following a heart attack, despite compelling evidence of the clinical benefits of these life-saving treatments. Poor adherence has substantial clinical and economic consequences. In the United States, suboptimal adherence accounts for 33%-69% of medication-related hospital admissions and $100 billion of potentially avoidable health spending each year.

In this study, previous adherence to chronic medications was a strong predictor of future adherence to newly initiated statins and was a stronger determinant than demographic variables, clinical variables, and other medication-based measures. When predicting medication adherence in administrative claims data, whether for targeted adherence improvement interventions or to better design comparative effectiveness research studies, models should include measures of previous medication adherence, such as mean PDC.

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