Effectiveness of Interventions to Improve Patient Compliance: A Meta-analysis

Authors: Roter, D; Hall, J; Merisca, R; Nordstrom, B; Cretin, D; Svarstad, B

Employer, payers, health care providers, and public health officials all devote an extraordinary amount of time to the issue of how to improve patient compliance. The core question is “how do we help patients help themselves?” The National Pharmaceutical Council funded this statistical analysis of 153 studies to explore different approaches – educational, behavioral and affective - to patient intervention to improve patient compliance, and the impact that each approach had on various outcome measures including hospitalization, specific diagnostic measures, pill counts/refill requests, patient self-reports, and utilization of health services. The authors found that no single approach was a “silver bullet” but rather that comprehensive compliance interventions work best.

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