EDITORIAL
Medication Adherence: Hope for Improvement?

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Where Adherence Works

Incredibly high medication adherence, even for cardiovascular therapy, is achieved in the ecosystem where researchers evaluate experimental premarketed drugs, also known as efficacy evaluation settings. For example, the landmark 4S clinical trial of the lipid-lowering drug simvastatin prospectively studied 4444 patients newly starting this investigational drug vs placebo and followed up patients for an average of 5.4 years for major cardiovascular events and mortality. Astonishingly, 90% of

The Wired World of Medications: An Upside Opportunity

The only aspect of our health care system that is 100% wired on a national basis and interactive in a real-time environment is our outpatient system of pharmacy. Stimulated by the Omnibus Reconciliation Act (OBRA) of 1990,5 which tied Medicaid pharmacy reimbursement to mandatory real-time drug-drug interaction evaluation, all US pharmacies (>60,000) became electronically wired and currently use the exact same data definitions and coding nomenclature to both send and receive interactive

New Opportunities for Improving Adherence

A key finding in the article by Dunlay et al1 was that economic concerns may prevent consistent medication adherence among patients with chronic heart failure. As noted in this study of patients treated in Rochester, MN, many more nonadherent patients report economic concerns as a key reason for skipping doses or stopping drugs altogether, whereas fewer adherent patients report having this issue. As substantially more small-molecule drugs lose patent protection and become generic, and as

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Dr Epstein is employed by Medco and has stock ownership in the company.

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