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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9192

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Farmer K, Jacobs E.
PILOT STUDY OF THE IMPACT ON PATIENT MEDICATION ADHERENCE BY A COMPANY SPONSORED NEWSLETTER COMPLIANCE PROGRAM
1995 Mar; 142:24


Abstract:

The purpose of this research was to investigate the potential effect of a company sponsored newsletter compliance program on patient adherence (compliance) with their drug therapy. The study evaluated patients receiving a calcium channel blocker (diltiazem) from an insurance program with prescription benefits in the state of Oklahoma over a two year period. Inclusion criteria for the measurement of a compliance ratio consisted of a minimum of 3 consecutive prescription claims with an identical drug, dose, and regimen. The data consisted of 28,181 claims for diltiazem. Patient-therapies were stratified by those who received the Cardisense-Marion Merrell Dow Inc. Newsletter (treatment), and patient drug regimens who did not receive the newsletter (control) during the evaluation period. The treatment vs. control comparison of the compliance ratio was conducted in addition to a pre and post evaluation of compliance for patients receiving the newsletter. For patients receiving the newsletter, the date the patient enrolled in the program served as the pre/post date for compliance calculation. Pre/post analysis were only conducted on patients receiving sufficient number of claims (3) to calculate both a pre and post compliance ratio. The results of the pilot study indicated that subscribing to a company sponsored newsletter does not seem to significantly affect compliance behavior. The overall compliance ratio for patients (treatment) after receiving the newsletter was 84.8%. The compliance ratio for patients not subscribing to the newsletter was lower (81.53%), however, the difference between the means was not statistically significant. The pre and post analysis of compliance for patients receiving the newsletter showed a minimal increase in the compliance ratio from 84.13% to 84.83%, which also was not statistically significant.

 

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909