Target’s packaging failed to increase compliance; study
Patient compliance has risen in prominence in recent years, with a study suggesting that 50-60 per cent of patients with chronic illnesses fail to adhere to their medications.
Failure to properly follow a prescription can result in worse health outcomes and more frequent hospitalisations, which has been estimated to cost the US health care system $170bn (€129bn) annually.
To improve this situation US Target pharmacies introduced new packaging in May 2005, which was intended to increase readability and understanding of the product’s label.
However, a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine that compared 23,745 Target users with one of nine chronic diseases and 162,368 matched non-Target pharmacy users found no significant difference in compliance between the groups.
Although this suggests that Target’s efforts to provide simpler, clearer pharmaceutical labelling have failed to improve compliance the researchers advise that further work into its effect on safety and adverse events is needed.
Researcher calls for labelling overhaul
One of the authors of the study above, William Shrank, also co-wrote a recent editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which calls on the Obama administration to implement a: “comprehensive program to replace our current patchwork of bad communication and excessive promotion.”
The authors claim that labels affixed to medication bottles vary greatly in their communication of warnings and instructions. These are often a patient’s main source of information as packaging inserts are “rarely”given out and encounters with clinicians “leave too little time to review drug risks and benefits”.
To address this the authors call on government to take a more hands on approach, replacing the self-regulation that they claim has been ineffective and implementing “a responsible national system of balanced, evidence-based, and user-friendly drug information”.
