The How To Fix Patient Compliance Now Series
This is the third in a series of posts offering steps to improve the study of and communication about patient compliance. These recommendations are simple and inexpensive; their implementation, in fact, is solely a function of motivation on the part of those working in the field. Finally, the benefits of these recommendations are magnificently self-apparent.
Previous Steps follow:
- Always provide context-pertinent definitions of Patient Compliance terminology
- Differentiate between unintentional and intentional noncompliance
Step #3. Support compliance claims
AKA Back it up or shut it up
AKA Don’t claim it if you can’t name it
Claims that, for example, medication compliance will be or has been improved by a new drug or the use of an automated reminder service has achieved X% adherence rate for participation in a disease screening program exam, must be accompanied by evidence.
Not doing so could mislead a naive audience; even worse, claims made without evidence to a more knowledgeable (or more cynical) audience may well play a role in making the entire field dealing with treatment adherence suspect. After all, if retailers of compliance enhancements, developers of a specific compliance model, and adherence promotions run by third party payers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and independent firms boast of compliance rates so high they would mark a major breakthrough in the field but provide no support or only allude to vaguely defined “studies” that, if existent, can’t be found, readers and viewers will (and should) be suspicious of compliance claims in general.
An Example From Real Life
When a medication adherence program administered under the imprimatur of a major health insurer claims a 95% compliance rate for treatments that typically carry a significantly lower rate of adherence, their press releases, especially those directed to clinicians, are, I contend, obligated to show the evidence. Was there a blind study with a control group? How was the rate calculated? If there was a study, was it run by an independent party or was it done internally? Without that basic information, the claim of a 95% compliance rate is little more than puffery.
That my repeated emails to the program director asking for this information receive no response is, unfortunately, all too typical and tends to abet my suspicions that something is being hidden.
Proprietary Is Not A Magic Word
I’ve been involved in enough business matters to understand the value of trade secrets and necessity of not revealing proprietary information.
On the other hand, I also know the difference between abracadabra and proprietary. And, I know there is something fundamentally wrong about declaring that the substance of a proprietary study must be kept secret while simultaneously claiming the alleged findings from that same study as evidence that a given compliance intervention or program is successful.
