Many patients with chronic conditions do not take as much of their medication as they should. As a result, the effectiveness of the treatment is often suboptimal, and it also becomes more expensive. Until now, the extent to which the guidance of patients could be improved to promote the correct use of medication had been unclear. Researchers at Maastricht University, collaborating with researchers from Wageningen University and the University of Sussex (UK), have now come to the striking conclusion that the percentage of successfully treated patients could increase by approximately forty per cent with optimum guidance. They have written about their findings in a study into the quality of guidance provided in the treatment of HIV in Archives of Internal Medicine (9 February).
Four out of ten patients being treated for chronic conditions do not take their medication as prescribed. They underestimate, for example, the risk of missed doses, have difficulty with integrating the treatment into their lives or simply forget to take the medicine. As a result, the patient does not experiences all the benefits of the treatment. Moreover, this leads to an increase in the medical costs as extra medical examinations are necessary, patients require additional or more expensive medication or they may need to be admitted to hospital.
Large-scale introduction