Adherence and Identity

(Wildebeest patient image from Google Gemini)

Adherence

In healthcare, “adherence” refers to a patient who complies with the recommendations of a medical professional. For example, if a doctor tells a diabetic to lay off the Double Big Gulp soft drinks, the patient should comply. A National Library of Medicine study explains why this is important:

“Patient adherence is vital for the quality of health care outcomes and treatment efficacy, and reduces the economic burden on the healthcare system.”

So if you don’t practice adherence, you could experience adverse health care outcomes…like death.

You would think that would be persuasive enough, but we have to mention “the economic burden.” But it’s sadly true. If a patient is treated multiple times for the same preventable condition, that’s money down the drain. Or bedpan.

But there’s a big hole in adherence measurement.

Adherence measurement

Let’s say you are told to take 4 pills a day for 7 days, and the pharmacy gives you a prescription for 28 pills. A week later all the pills are gone.

Does this demonstrate patient adherence to health instructions?

Absolutely not.

Maybe you flushed all 28 pills down the toilet and didn’t ingest a single one.

Or maybe you have been giving some pills to your wildebeest.

In the ideal world, you would want to ensure that the medication was taken by the correct patient, not by a toilet or a wildebeest.

When adherence identity is important

I will grant that this is ridiculous for a vitamin.

But what about a chemotherapy drug? How will you know that the right patient is taking it and adhering to the medical plan?

Will you ask the patient for their name and date of birth, and consider your adherence monitoring job done?

Give me a…fracture.