Fax alerts do not improve medication compliance

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

A new study suggests that faxing doctors about patient non-aherence to antidpressant medication is not effective.
To be most effective, antidepressant medication has to be taken for at least six months. Many patients give up taking their tablets before this, for a variety of reasons, and so risk relapsing. A team at Harvard Medical School has been investigating a way of possibly improving the level of compliance.

They looked at the pharmacy records of more than 13,000 patients beginning treatment with antidepressants. When a patient stopped taking their medication, a faxed alert was sent to their physician. The doctor could then discuss reasons for non-adherence with the patient. But the new intervention did not seem to be effective. The team says that they still think the fax alert could work, but probably needs to be used in conjunction with other strategies to improve compliance with treatment.

Source
Archives of Internal Medicine 13th March 2006

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