Patients not following orders? How Patient Support Programs improve medication adherence
AI-translated from the Chinese original · editorially reviewed
Clinical research in modern medicine shows that Patient Support Programs (PSPs) have a significant impact on improving medication adherence and health outcomes. These programs address patients' care needs outside the hospital, offering personalized care, effective communication channels, medication adherence strategies, and comprehensive health education—strengthening patients' understanding of their own health and fostering shared management between doctors and patients.
A research paper by Diana Brixner and colleagues found that PSPs involving professional nurses can significantly improve medication adherence rates; although drug costs increased, total healthcare costs fell. However, the effect of PSPs on medication adherence varies from program to program, which is why behavioral science and digital technology are needed to enhance program effectiveness. Medication non-adherence puts enormous cost pressure on healthcare systems—in the United States alone, waste from patients not following prescribed treatment runs as high as US$290 billion.
Patients fail to follow their prescribed treatment for many reasons: financial difficulties, not understanding their disease, deliberately ignoring instructions, forgetting to take medication, or family factors. PSPs use a range of strategies to help patients adhere to their treatment plans, including disease information, medication management, lifestyle adjustments, and emotional support. With the introduction of digital health monitoring tools and AI, PSPs are no longer limited to these strategies—they have become more personalized, able to provide information and positive guidance tailored to each case, further improving the effectiveness of communication.
With the development of digital health monitoring tools—and, more recently, the involvement of AI—PSP services can go beyond catching patient anomalies to actually predicting patient behavior and intervening early, though if poorly designed their value remains debatable. AI-powered prediction makes PSP management more personalized, tailoring information delivery and positive coaching to each individual's situation, and achieving better communication outcomes based on each person's specific data and behavior.
Using a continuous stream of messages to help patients manage their disease and treatment, delivered across channels via smartphone, tablet, or computer, can dramatically improve patients' adherence to medical advice. This opens up an entirely new perspective for PSPs, offering a way to tackle medication non-adherence and allowing healthcare providers' positive influence to extend into patients' daily lives.
The PATIENTSFORCE Patient Support Program, with integrated care services combining voice messaging and LINE messages, has already been deployed in care programs for special diseases and achieved medication adherence rates above 90–98%. It enables care teams to help patients follow their treatment plans more effectively, gather information through continuous care, and give physicians a fuller picture of patients' physical and mental condition and medication use at follow-up visits—further improving patients' medication adherence.
Sean Chang, General Manager, Media-WIND Health Group (MWHG)
sean.chang@media-wind.com.tw
References
- Brixner D, Rubin DT, Mease P, Mittal M, Liu H, Davis M, Ganguli A, Fendrick AM. Patient Support Program Increased Medication Adherence with Lower Total Health Care Costs Despite Increased Drug Spending. J Manag Care Spec Pharm. 2019 Jul;25(7):770-779. doi: 10.18553/jmcp.2019.18443. Epub 2019 May 11. PMID: 31081461; PMCID: PMC10398065.