Medication Compliance
Medication Compliance is the act of patients adhering to a prescribed set of medications that may be essential to improve the quality of life. Today, an astounding number of patients (sometimes reported at 80 percent and rarely, if ever, below 30 percent) do not take or follow their prescribed medicines as recommended by their physicians. This results in decreased health results, wasted money on medications and excess rehospitalizations.
Why aren’t patients taking medications? And what is VitArbr doing to address it?
1. Inadequate follow-up or discharge planning
VitArbr uses telemedicine products from companies we partner with in order to bring care inside of homes to patients. This allows physicians to continuously check up and follow out on a desired plan with a patient.
2. Medication side effects and patient lack in belief of treatment (5% of individuals not taking medication did so because they did not believe they were sick (anosognosia))
Cost of medication, copayment, or both
We develop educational content to share with out community that addresses the importance of following through on medications. Through educational symposiums we push our message across to help foster the understanding of medications.
3. Poor provider-patient relationship
This is another example of where telemedicine will be incorporated to bring care inside the home of patients. Physicians will be able to continuously checkup and understand how their patients are doing.
In addition to incorporating Artificial Intelligence and Telemedicine, we focus on educating our doctors on asking the following questions to truly understand how compliant are their patients in taking medications.
1. Do you have all of the medications you were prescribed? (Probe for barriers such as cost or confusion.)
2. Do you understand why you are taking them?
3. Do you ever forget to take your medications? (Discuss phone alarms, putting pills by the coffeemaker, etc.)
4. Do any of your medications make you sick?
5. If you feel worse, do you stop taking them?
6. If you feel better, do you stop taking them?
This questionnaire gives an overall idea of A. Is the patient really taking medication? And B. If not, what can we do to fix it?
We continue to push the boundary on educating and innovating to change the face of compliance.