Patient (non)compliance

From the PharmaTimes article:

One third to a half of all US patients do not take their medications as prescribed, and this is costing the nation $290 billion - 13% of total health expenditures - every year, says a new report.

Such poor levels of compliance are fuelling - and are fuelled by - the rising tide of chronic disease, says the report, by researchers at the New England Healthcare Institute (NEHI). In general, people with chronic illnesses are worse at taking their medications as prescribed than those with acute conditions, and medication persistence – the length of time a patient continues to take a prescribed drug – tends to be very low among this group.

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