THE VICIOUS CIRCLE OF PATIENTS' NON-ADHERENCE WITH MEDICATION REGIMENTS

Introduction: Patients’ medication adherence is a key factor for the management of chronic diseases. Purpose: This review was aimed to describe the vicious circle of patients’ medication non-adherence. Methodology: A literature review was conducted through PubMed and Scholar databases, on both English and Greek languages, using the following keywords “adherence”, “compliance”, non-adherence”, non-compliance”, “health outcomes” and “cost-related non-adherence”. Results: Variation in patients’ medication non-adherence depending on the underlying diseases were referred. The vicious circle of medication non-adherence begins with the negative consequences on patient’s health outcomes, which results are to increase service utilization and then leads to increase costs in healthcare systems. Then, the financial burden passes on to the patients; negatively affecting their adherence. Then the vicious circle starts again from the beginning with even poorer adherence this time. Interventions to improve medication adherence are distinguished to those related to the patient, the healthcare team and the healthcare system, the characteristics of the disease, the therapy as well as the socioeconomic factors. Conclusions: Medication non-adherence is a public health problem, it concerns all ages and mostly the older.  Addressing it requires joint and coordinated efforts between policy makers and healthcare professionals.