WEDNESDAY, Oct. 20, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Strategies to address improving medication adherence for patients with hypertension should include patient education and counseling; simplifying treatment regimens; use of reminders, monitoring, and feedback; and incentives, according to a scientific statement from the American Heart Association published online Oct. 7 in Hypertension.
Niteesh K. Choudry, M.D., Ph.D., from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and colleagues examined the contribution of medication nonadherence to the national prevalence of poor blood pressure control, methods for measuring medication adherence, risk factors for antihypertensive medication nonadherence, and strategies for improving adherence.
The authors noted that factors associated with nonadherence fall into the socioeconomic and demographic dimension, therapy-related dimension, health care system/team dimension, patient-related dimension, and condition-related dimension. Interventions for effective medication adherence can be categorized into four categories: patient education and counseling, including providing patients with information about the condition and treatment to improve motivation; medication regimen management by simplifying treatment regimens (e.g., by consolidating doses); use of reminders, monitoring, and feedback, such as telephone or mail and text messaging refill reminders, electronic monitoring and feedback, smartphone apps, and use of self-measured blood pressure; and incentives such as reducing or eliminating out-of-pocket costs or providing financial initiatives for achievement of chronic disease management goals.
“Patients do have a large role to play in medication adherence but shifting to a systems approach will likely reap bigger benefits in the long run,” write the authors of an accompanying editorial.
Several authors disclosed financial ties to the biopharmaceutical and medical technology industries; one author from the editorial disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
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