Medication Compliance: Truth and Consequences 1.5 CME

This activity has been approved for 1.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™

Fact:  30% patients don’t pick up their prescription

Fact:  Less than 50% of patients are compliant

Fact:  $330 Billion/year waste in U.S.

Fact:  Medication non-adherence is the single greatest cause of healthcare waste.

There is no more routine activity in healthcare practice than prescribing medications.  We depend on patients to pick up their medication from a local pharmacy, take it home, and ingest it on time and on schedule.  They return for follow up with our understanding that all instructions have been followed.  We measure outcomes based on this perception and order further therapy based on those outcomes.  That is the norm or so we think. 

Non-adherence and non-compliance are virtually invisible to healthcare providers.  It happens away from our observation. The reasons are many and multi-focal.  It is so common and affects the majority of patients who take medications that a more realistic approach would be to label it as the norm and the patient who is on time and on schedule as the exception.  Non adherence is a major barrier to health and costs are in the billions.  It may be the number one cause of waste in global healthcare resources.  And yet the overwhelming majority of healthcare providers still prescribe and forget.

This course brings attention to the epidemic of medication non-adherence.  It also introduces clinical practice improvement techniques, proven successful in the corporate world, to offer a template under which every provider can improve medication compliance in their practice.  By the time you earn your Johns Hopkins School of Medicine CME credits you will have acquired a new skill that can be used to solve wide ranging problems.  You will also have a step by step recipe to improve non-adherence that is robbing your practice of time and resources and in turn robbing patients of their health. 

The course is brought to you using a “virtual classroom” that can be accessed 24/7/365 on any device connected to the Internet using any network.  Once enrolled it will never leave your account and will be updated as needed.  A Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine CME certificate is available to you by download immediately upon completion of the class.

Click the first lesson below to begin.