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How Is Prescription Routines Related To Heart Disease Prevention
If people could adopt healthy lifestyle with regular exercises since they were young, chances that they would develop heart disease would significantly be reduced. But when they are diagnosed with heart disease, they would have to seek help from cardiologists (doctors dealing with disorders of the heart) and take appropriate medications to prevent possible heart attack or heart failure that could be fatal. According to a study conducted by researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, patients on heart disease medications were less likely to fill their prescriptions if they had to make more trips to a pharmacy or have multiple doctors prescribing them medications.Complexity has been an issue over the years in the United States. Such complexity has been caused by health insurers and pharmacies and by the fact that patients have been prescribed more and more medications.
The paper, which was published on May 9, 2011 in ‘Archives of Internal Medicine’, reported that 10 percent of patients with the most complex routines filled 23 or more prescriptions over the 3 months and made 11 or more pharmacy visits, and they got their prescription from at least 4 doctors. This more or less showed how complicated the medication routines were. Researchers analyzed a database of about 2.5 million patients who were prescribed a heart medication, including cholesterol-fighting stations, in 2006 and 2007. Over a period of 3 months, each of these patients was tracked to see how many medications they were prescribed for both heart disease and other conditions, as well as how many doctors prescribed their medications, how many pharmacies they had to use to fill those medications, and how often they visited a pharmacy. The researchers also recorded how frequently these patients filled their heart disease medication prescriptions over the following year. Analysis showed that patients had to fill an average of 11 prescriptions for 6 different medications and made 5 visits to pharmacy during the first 3 months. During the following year, they filled an average of two-thirds of their heart medication prescriptions. Patients who had to make more pharmacy visits and fill prescriptions from more doctors were found to be less likely to get their heart disease medications filled. But patients who were taking more medications actually appeared to be better about filling their heart medications than those taking fewer, especially when they could fill all of their prescriptions during just a few pharmacy visits. It was unclear why such phenomenon occurred. Researchers suspected people who ended up being prescribed more medications have no choice but to develop mechanisms for management of medications in a way that they were integrated more into their daily lives. Though there is no proof that simplified prescription could ensure patients better fill them, it might help hospitals make fewer errors when patients were admitted and need a change in these medications. For patients with chronic disease such as heart disease, use of medication and prescription filling are often complex. Taking many medications a few times a day is not uncommon. Such regimen together with number of pharmacy visits for patients to pick up their medications might be related to how well patients adhere to their medications. While patients often have medications they are taking at home, doctors still need to keep track what these medications are, whether the patients are adherent or taking medications as prescribed, and if they do not, why they do not take medications. It is important that appropriate strategies with consideration of all mentioned above could be devised to cut down the complexity and help improve medication adherence.
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