Impact of Appointment-Based Medication Synchronization on Existing Users of Chronic Medications

Abstract

An ABMS program in a community pharmacy setting was associated with higher rates of adherence and persistence for patients who had been taking chronic medications for at least 6 months. Approximately 18 to 35 additional ABMS participants were adherent for every 100 patients enrolled when compared with usual care. For every 100 patients receiving usual care, 17 to 40 additional patients in the ABMS group were persistent. This study shows that ABMS programs can improve medication adherence and persistence for patients who are newly prescribed or currently taking chronic medications.

The impact of appointment-based medication synchronization on medication taking behaviour and health outcomes: A systematic review

“…Four studies were non‐randomized and their internal validity assessment suggests a low risk of bias for these studies (Table ) . Three observational studies were satisfactory in all domains except in demonstration that the outcome of interest was not present at the start of the study.…”

“…Our bibliographical database search identified 3322 citations with an additional citation identified through Google Scholar (Figure ). After screening and full‐text assessment, five studies were included in our review and an overview of their characteristics are presented in Table . DiDonato et al .…”

“…Matching or multivariate regression was employed to control for confounding. All three studies evaluated objective measures of medication taking behaviour at 12 months. Additionally, one of these observational studies also evaluated healthcare resource utilization and costs at 12 months, whereas a second study used outcomes data to model costs using a decision‐tree analysis.…”

“…Patients received a call to confirm medications to be refilled prior to each refill cycle, which in most studies was monthly although one study allowed patients to select their cycle length. In three studies, patients picked up their medications in‐person while options inclusive of in‐person pickup or mail order were used in the remaining two studies. The study by Zillich et al .…”

The impact of an appointment-based medication synchronization programme on chronic medication adherence in an adult community pharmacy population

“…The results of our study are similar to previous ABMS research. For example, Holdford and Saxena evaluated adherence to six different drug classes for patients enrolled in an ABMS programme compared to a matched cohort of patients not enrolled (usual care) . Adherence was consistently better in the ABMS group as measured both by mean PDC (0.80‐0.87 vs 0.58‐0.62) and by percentage of patients achieving at least 0.80 PDC (66.1%‐79.5% vs 37.0%‐40.8%).…”