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American Medicine

When physicians prescribe medications, the doctors assume that patients will take their medications on a regular basis.  However, when patients are actually studied, 30% to 50% of adult patients are not consistently taking their long-term medications.  This leads to approximately $100 billion in extra health care costs nationally, dollars that could be better used to provide better and more comprehensive care for people. When patients don’t take their medicines, results are worsening of their medical conditions and more hospitalizations.

You have to take all your medicines.

You would think that the more serious the medical condition, the more likely that patients would accurately take their medicine. But that appears to be wrong! In an interesting article, cancer patients were studied by S. Zafar and co-workers (The Oncologist 2013; Volume 18, Page 381).  They found that many patients tried to save money, and 20% of over 250 cancer patients took less than the prescribed amount of medication.  Amazingly, 24% of patients did not fill their prescriptions at all!  In addition another 19% only partially filled their prescriptions.

Here are my tips to help you take all your medications prescribed by your doctors:

• Make certain that you understand the amount of medication you are supposed to take when the physician gives you a prescription.
• Ask the doctor or the pharmacist if there are less expensive medications which can do the same job (generics or similar drugs that are less expensive).
• If you are having trouble affording your medications, review this with your physician as soon as possible.
• If you are not filling your prescriptions on time, discuss this with your pharmacist to see what can be done to remind you to get your medications when you are supposed to.
• If you are having side effects of medication that interfere with your taking the medication on a regular basis, immediately discuss this with the nurses or physician at the practice so that alternative treatments can be suggested.

For further information on finding affordable medications, see my “Surviving American Medicine”.