The survey examining prescription adherence was released today by Prescription Solutions, a leading pharmacy benefit management organization and a UnitedHealth Group company, and the National Council on Patient Information and Education (NCPIE).

Poor adherence to medications -- the extent to which people take their medications as prescribed by their doctor -- can have adverse effects on people’s health. It diminishes the ability to treat chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, asthma and many other diseases; and it can result in suffering, an increase in hospitalizations and even death.

Nonadherence with prescription medications also is a key source of unnecessary cost in the U.S. health care system. According to a recent New England Healthcare Institute (NEHI) study, otherwise avoidable medical spending resulting directly from nonadherence accounts for up to $290 billion per year, or 13 percent of total health care expenditures.

. . . Of those surveyed, 37 percent said they did not finish taking all the prescription medicine as instructed, and 31 percent said they skipped doses. Twenty-three percent said they did not refill their prescriptions as instructed.

When asked why they did not follow their doctors’ instructions, 59 percent said that they started to feel better and didn’t think it was necessary to keep taking the prescription medicine. Four in 10 (37 percent) said they were concerned about side effects, while 25 percent said that they weren’t feeling any better so they didn’t think it was necessary to keep taking the prescription medicine. Nearly a quarter (24 percent) said they stopped taking the medicine because it was too expensive.

The rest of the story . . . .