An abstract was recently published on the Health Affairs website title, “Greater Adherence To Diabetes Drugs Is Linked To Less Hospital Use And Could Save Nearly $5 Billion Annually”.  The abstract, written by Ashish K. Jha, an associate professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, et al. offers commentary on the substantial benefits of improving adherence to medication for both reducing costs and improving care for patients with chronic illness.  The research was conducted across a national sample of diabetes patients from 2005 to 2008.

Amongst other things, the researchers concluded,

“…we project that improved adherence to diabetes medication could avert 699,000 emergency department visits and 341,000 hospitalizations annually, for a saving of $4.7 billion. Eliminating the loss of adherence (which occurred in one out of every four patients in our sample) would lead to another $3.6 billion in savings, for a combined potential savings of $8.3 billion.”

and

“Our analysis suggests that improved adherence among patients with diabetes should be a key goal for the health care system and policy makers.”

In any chronic disease, compliance to a physician’s plan is crucial, but certain diseases, such as diabetes, rely heavily on medication and monitoring to properly manage the illness to reduce hospital admissions and co-morbidities.

Several companies, including ALR Technologies (OTCBB: ALRT), have demonstrated in clinical trials a connection a between adherence and glycated hemoglobin (A1c) levels, the gold standard in measuring glycemic control:  when adherence increases, A1c decreases.   This is important because every one percentage point drop in A1c (i.e. from 8.0 percent to 7.0 percent) can reduce the risk of microvascular complications (such as eye, kidney and nerve diseases) by up to 40 percent and can reduce the risk of a major cardiovascular event (such as stroke or heart attack) by up to 20 percent.

The article, including a PDF version of the abstract can be viewed at:  http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/31/8/1836.abstract#aff-1

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