Supporting adherence for people starting a new medication for a long-term condition through community pharmacies: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial of the New Medicine Service

Scaffolding our systems? Patients and families ‘reaching in’ as a source of healthcare resilience.

“…It may be that certain key—perhaps more ‘upstream’—activities within healthcare processes should be more prescribed, leaving other activities—perhaps those ‘downstream’—to vary according to context. An example of one such ‘hybrid’ intervention is arguably the New Medicine Service, which asks community pharmacists to support patients with medication adherence 24. The initial intervention point is prescribed with an interview schedule, but subsequent follow-up varies dependent on the outcomes of the early conversations and patient need 24.…”

“…An example of one such ‘hybrid’ intervention is arguably the New Medicine Service, which asks community pharmacists to support patients with medication adherence 24. The initial intervention point is prescribed with an interview schedule, but subsequent follow-up varies dependent on the outcomes of the early conversations and patient need 24. From the patient perspective, such a hybrid intervention might be a prescribed set of key questions patients and families could ask when being discharged from hospital, allowing better informed (but variable) discussions to take place with different healthcare professionals across community and primary care services once home.…”

Cost effectiveness of the New Medicine Service

“…3 The trial reported that of 378 patients still taking the initial medicine, 61% (95% CI 54 to 67) and 71% (95% CI 64 to 77) of patients were adherent in the normal practice and NMS arms, respectively (p=0.04 for difference). Analysis models were developed for diseases targeted by the NMS to assess the impact of patients’ non-adherence.…”

Adherence: the Holy Grail?

“…The evaluation of the English New Medicines Service14 is an example of commissioned research evaluating an implemented policy, based on earlier research12 as described above. The study design was pragmatic and is an interesting example of how to conduct a randomised controlled trial in the context of a service already universally implemented.…”