Whether it's due to high out-of-pocket costs, concerns about side effects, procrastination or other factors, 20%-30% of patients don't act on their new prescriptions, while others do not take medications as prescribed.

WHY IT MATTERS
By partnering with Watertown, Massachusetts-based athenahealth, the system's 145,000 providers can now access automated messaging within their established prescribing workflows to help drive better adherence to prescribed treatment plans.

Rockville, Maryland-based DrFirst said in a statement that the platform has received 92% overall positive scores across 3 million patient ratings since 2017, indicating patients welcome the medical adherence messages with a behavioral and educational focus from RxInform.

THE LARGER TREND
According to several federal agencies, medication is not just abandoned, it's also not taken as prescribed about 50% of the time. The result is poor chronic disease treatment and an increase in overall deaths from chronic diseases.

Primary care providers and clinicians need tools to help patients take medications as prescribed and improve value-based care.

Some of those tools are simple patient-engagement efforts like text reminders, but many healthcare organizations are now deploying more advanced AI-enabled interventions.

ON THE RECORD
"Every provider wants to minimize prescription abandonment rates because non-adherence to medication regimens negatively affects desired clinical outcomes," Paul Brient, chief product officer for athenahealth, said in a statement.

"By adding RxInform to the latest release of athenaOne, we are immediately giving all our providers an automated function within their established prescribing workflows to support better patient outcomes."

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.