Guest Post At InsureBlog: The Cost Of Patient Non-Compliance
While I was “homeless” my blogging friends kindly invited me to guest post at their websites. Henry Stern at InsureBlog posted this for me:
Are Health Insurance Dollars Being Wasted Due To Medication Non-Compliance?In case the answer to that question isn’t obvious, it is a resounding “yes.” Non-compliance costs the health insurance industry a staggering 177 billion dollars a year. It is estimated that fifty percent of patients forget to take their meds and over 30 percent don’t refill their prescriptions. Twenty percent say they don’t take the full course of treatment and fifty percent of patients don’t take drugs as directed. So much for preventing that heart attack, stroke, or limb amputation.The health insurance industry (as well as pharmaceutical companies) have invested heavily in patient compliance initiatives, most of which have failed to produce substantially improved outcomes. The reason?…
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