Doctors, firms push for patient compliance
Charles E. Buban Philippine Daily Inquirer September 08, 2006

My impression is that patient compliance been featured in the lay media with increased frequency recently. This may, of course, be no more than my imagination or a statistical fluke. Or perhaps there is a special Editors’ Calendar that calls for features on treatment noncompliance in the Fall. Regardless, this basic review of noncompliance in the Philippine Daily Inquirer is typical.

The core data of these articles are consistent:

• Illnesses that cause death and disability can be effectively treated, but patients don’t always adhere to treatment; unnecessary suffering and deaths occur as a result.
• Compliance is important for patients, clinicians, and pharmaceutical companies
• Noncompliance also leads to increased healthcare costs

• Noncompliance may be caused by many reasons (e.g., cost, misunderstandings, forgetfulness, etc.), which may occur in various combinations

• Many compliance enhancements may help (patient education and the doctor-patient relationship are often mentioned)

In addition, a specific compliance enhancement program or methodology is often mentioned. ¹

This article is clear and accurate but is remarkable only because it is example of the kind of patient compliance piece recently seen in several newspapers and magazines.


Footnotes

1. In the case of the Inquirer article a Pfizer program is presented at length and in such detail that one must suspect the reporter has a press release at hand [back]

• Regimen Simplification Enhances Compliance With Short Term Antibiotics
• The Times Makes Medication Noncompliance Official
• Compliance Is Compliance Is Compliance
• Blogswana Post: Using Traditional Healers To Increase AIDS Treatment Compliance
• Treatment Adherence Not Affected By Patient Preferences