Essay On Medication Nonadherence

The United States has some of the best healthcare in the world. Research and advances in technology have created a very reliable system for Americans to have optimal health. Despite all these positive qualities, the U.S health care program is suffering from a severe epidemic. Lately, patients have not followed the directions given to take prescription medications that were provided by their healthcare provider. This is known as medication nonadherence. Only twenty-five percent of prescriptions are appropriately taken in the United States. Not only does this threaten the patient, but it also endangers the entire healthcare field as well. The effects of medication nonadherence are the unnecessary attention brought to the epidemic, fees in the
This predicament has caused other professionals in the healthcare field to become more cautious and nervous about how they will be affected than ever before. A great real-world example of this would be diabetes patients. Diabetes patients with poor medication adherence have a thirty percent yearly risk of hospitalization, as opposed to a thirteen percent risk for those who follow prescriber guidelines. This creates a problem for professionals working in hospitals. Instead of taking care of traumatic emergencies or the terminally ill, many hospital employees must spend time taking care of diabetes patients that could have easily stayed out of the hospital if they had just taken their prescribed insulin. Incidents such as this massively decrease productivity from employees, grabbing the attention of the employers as well. While unneeded attention may seem like a huge problem caused by nonadherence, it does not compare to how much money is lost in the healthcare industry because of
It is hard to remember that many people rely on medication to keep going on with their daily lives. Unfortunately, when people do not take the required drugs given to them, it is sometimes too severe to fix. This horrible problem is responsible for 125,000 deaths annually. It has become so severe that medication nonadherence is now one of the leading causes of preventable morbidity and mortality. Being nonadherent to prescriptions will significantly decrease one’s chance of living. In a study by NEHI, nonadherent diabetes and heart disease patients have a twelve percent mortality rate, compared to adherent patients who suffer from a mere seven percent. As these statistics show, something needs to be done to protect the safety of patients.This number is only increasing as the guidelines of prescriptions are becoming less strict each