Abstract
Digital Patient Coaching has been shown to positively improve clinical and behavioral outcomes as well as lower overall utilization in care. One key factor in improved behaviors is medication adherence. Understanding attitudes towards the medications patients are taking, how they discuss medications with their clinicians, as well as other factors that may affect their adherence such as mental health, financial wellbeing, and psychosocial support. Patients engaged in a Pack Health digital coaching program for 12 weeks; through their journey, over over 100+ patient-reported outcomes (PROs) were collected. After 12 weeks of engagement, patients were surveyed on additional questions related to medication adherence (CASE Index) and screened for depression by PHQ-4. Questions were asked about overall medication adherence, adherence to prescription and non-prescription drugs, convenience, and depression. 93.3% of respondents had prescriptions. Respondents who screened positive for potential of depression were less likely to be adherent to medications. Patients need additional resources around medications and coping with depression; 70.0% report missing doses of their medication at least some of the time and 71.3% report taking their medication at a different time than prescribed at least some of the time (n=179). The top 3 reasons why patients were not taking any prescription medications were: the medication(s) costs too much, using natural/homeopathic alternatives, and doctor doesn’t think I need prescriptions. This study strongly suggests that patients’ mental health and experience of their medications (how they feel when they take them and how convenient they’re perceived to be) have a bearing on medication adherence. There is a need for patient education around how to take medications to combat the feeling of inconvenience. Health coaching, built around motivational interviewing and behavior change models, has shown improvements in the management of chronic conditions and medication adherence and can be a good solution to improve medication adherence.
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