According to a 2018 U.S. Pharmacist publication, it’s estimated that adherence to chronic medications is about 50%, and nonadherence can account for up to 50% of treatment failures, around 125,000 deaths, and up to 25% of hospitalizations each year in the United States.
Considering annual spend on healthcare is over $4 trillion in the US, and hospitalizations account for roughly one third of this spend, the impact of medication adherence is substantial, to say the least.
One challenge for care coordinators, when it comes to helping patients with medication adherence, is that they are often working from incomplete data sets. EHR systems may have prescriptions, but won’t always show when a medication is filled, and claims data will show when meds are filled, but won’t show if something was prescribed.
At Arcadia, we combine these data sets into a unified data asset, so we can expose these insights in easy-to-use workflows. Although the challenge related to medication adherence goes way beyond what can be addressed through care coordination, that doesn’t mean it’s not helpful. And, even if a patient fills a medication, there’s still the challenge of having them take the med, at the proper dose, and at the proper frequency.
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