• Br J Gen Pract · Sep 2017

    Impact of initial medication non-adherence on use of healthcare services and sick leave: a longitudinal study in a large primary care cohort in Spain.

    • Ignacio Aznar-Lou, Ana Fernández, Montserrat Gil-Girbau, Ramón Sabés-Figuera, Marta Fajó-Pascual, María Teresa Peñarrubia-María, Antoni Serrano-Blanco, Patricia Moreno-Peral, Albert Sánchez-Niubó, Marian March-Pujol, and Maria Rubio-Valera.
    • Research Institute Sant Joan de Déu, Esplugues de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red en Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), Madrid, Spain.
    • Br J Gen Pract. 2017 Sep 1; 67 (662): e614e622e614-e622.

    BackgroundInitial medication non-adherence is highly prevalent in primary care but no previous studies have evaluated its impact on the use of healthcare services and/or days on sick leave.AimTo estimate the impact of initial medication non-adherence on the use of healthcare services, days of sick leave, and costs overall and in specific medication groups.Design And SettingA 3-year longitudinal register-based study of all primary care patients (a cohort of 1.7 million) who were prescribed a new medication in Catalonia (Spain) in 2012.MethodThirteen of the most prescribed and/or costly medication subgroups were considered. All medication and medication subgroups (chronic, analgesics, and penicillin) were analysed. The number of healthcare services used and days on sick leave were considered. Multilevel multivariate linear regression was used. Three levels were included: patient, GP, and primary care centre.ResultsInitially adherent patients made more use of medicines and some healthcare services than non-adherent and partially adherent patients. They had lower productivity losses, producing a net economic return, especially when drugs for acute diseases (such as penicillins) were considered. Initial medication non-adherence resulted in a higher economic burden to the system in the short term.ConclusionInitial medication non-adherence seems to have a short-term impact on productivity losses and costs. The clinical consequences and long-term economic consequences of initial medication non-adherence need to be assessed. Interventions to promote initial medication adherence in primary care may reduce costs and improve health outcomes.© British Journal of General Practice 2017.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…