Abstract
BackgroundThe aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of self-reported underuse of medications due to procurement costs amongst older persons from seven European urban communities.MethodsThe data were collected in a cross-sectional study (“ABUEL, Elder abuse: A multinational prevalence survey”) in 2009. Randomly selected people aged 60–84 years (n = 4,467) from seven urban communities: Stuttgart (Germany), Athens (Greece), Ancona (Italy), Kaunas (Lithuania), Porto (Portugal), Granada (Spain) and Stockholm (Sweden) were interviewed. Response rate - 45.2 %. Ethical permission was received in each country.ResultsThe results indicate that 3.6 % (n = 162) of the respondents self-reported refraining from buying prescribed medications due to cost. The highest prevalence of this problem was identified in Lithuania (15.7 %, n = 99) and Portugal (4.3 %, n = 28). Other countries reported lower percentages of refraining from buying medications (Germany – 2.0 %, Italy – 1.6 %, Sweden – 1.0 %, Greece – 0.6 %, Spain – 0.3 %). Females refrained more often from buying medications than males (2.6 % vs. 4.4 %, p < 0.0001). The prevalence of this refraining tended to increase with economic hardship.DiscussionThese differences between countries can be only partly described by the financing of health-care systems. In spite of the presence of cost reimbursement mechanisms, patients need to make co-payments (or in some cases to pay the full price) for prescribed medications. This indicates that the purchasing power of people in 10.1186/s12913-015-1089-4 the particular country can play a major role and be related with the economic situation in the country. Lithuania, which has reported the highest refrain rates, had the lowest gross domestic product (at the time of conducting this study) of all participating countries in the study.ConclusionsRefraining from buying the prescribed medications due to cost is a problem for women and men in respect to ageing people in Europe. Prevalence varies by country, sex, and economic hardship.
Highlights
The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of self-reported underuse of medications due to procurement costs amongst older persons from seven European urban communities
Refraining from buying the prescribed medications due to cost is a problem for women and men in respect to ageing people in Europe
The results indicate that 3.6 % of all respondents of the study had refrained from buying the prescribed medications due to cost
Summary
The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of self-reported underuse of medications due to procurement costs amongst older persons from seven European urban communities. Stankuniene et al BMC Health Services Research (2015) 15:419 review by Perkins (2002) showed that the correlation of poor adherence were as follows: patients’ beliefs about their illness/benefits of treatment, and barriers to treatment such as easy access to treatment, family/social support and perceived costs of treatment [6]. This non-adherence to medication use may cause serious problems to the health status of patients and increased cost to health-care systems in terms of additional hospital admissions. We still lack comparable data on the refraining of purchasing medications due to cost
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