I just also read where UnitedHealthCare is going to offer a $20.00 discount today too on some of the higher priced drugs to encourage patients to take their meds.
Well, with the stance of the FDA today on so many different drugs and information that is coming out, perhaps some consumers are doing their
homework first to make sure the drug is ok for them to take. This is where medical records can be a big help in running the queries to see if in fact you may or may not be at risk with taking certain medications. In the meantime, we have the reports that “bad” patients are not doing their part.
Is it money we want or good health? At one time Aetna even had a “take your pill” lottery pilot program and I don’t know the latest on how it worked or if it did work.
I’ll make one statement here for all of use patients: Get us credible information on the drugs we take and let the informed patient work with their doctor to make these decisions. We want to know if what takes care of our blood pressure today or cholesterol is going to choke out our liver in a few years for one. Patients want to get treatment, but we also want to know every bit about the treatment and the cure, and with all the unknowns today in some areas, this is hard. We want to know that the cure is not going to be worse than the condition, and number 2, we want to know that we can afford it!
So, in short, let’s get the doctor/patient relationship back in hand here as that is the key, teamwork without everyone else butting in to make judgment on what is right and what is wrong.
Give the doctors and the patients a break and quit categorizing us as “bad doctors” and “bad patients”, it’s getting to be a big annoyance and is very counter productive toward achieving better healthcare. BD
WOONSOCKET, R.I. (Aug. 27) More than 50% of adults under the age of 45 who are prescribed a medication to treat high cholesterol are not taking their medication as prescribed, according to the findings of a study released Thursday by CVS Caremark.
In fact, the study found that 58% of adults between the ages of 18 and 34 are not taking their cholesterol-lowering medications as prescribed.
The study examined adherence to cholesterol-lowering medications by evaluating de-identified data for more than 74,000 adult patients from the CVS Caremark Health Management Claims Database who incurred claims from a cholesterol-lowering medication between Jan. 1, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2008.
CVS Caremark study notes lack of adherence to cholesterol-lowering medications - Drug Store News
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