Patient Prefer Adher
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Patient Prefer Adher · Jan 2017
EditorialComing full circle in the measurement of medication adherence: opportunities and implications for health care.
There is little debate that medication nonadherence is a major public health issue and that measuring nonadherence is a crucial step toward improving it. Moreover, while measuring adherence is becoming both more feasible and more common in the era of electronic information, the reliability and usefulness of various measurements of adherence have not been well established. This paper outlines the most commonly used measures of adherence and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each that depend on the purpose for which the measure will be used. ⋯ Less robust measures were found to be commonly misapplied and subsequently misinterpreted in population-level analyses. Adherence assessment and measurement were rarely integrated into standard patient care practice patterns. Successful scalable and impactful strategies to improve medication adherence will depend on understanding how to efficiently and effectively measure adherence.