CVS Caremark Examining Consumer Mindset and Why Some Patients Stop Taking their Medicine

WOONSOCKET, R.I., April 13 /PRNewswire/ -- CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS) today announced the results of a study of why some patients who say they want to be adherent to their medications still stop taking them. The company enlisted psychologists for its newest study to find out if individuals know what is motivating them to stop taking medicine, or if they don't recognize assumptions they are making that are prompting them to stop.  

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The study was conducted by Minds at Work of Cambridge, MA, a company founded by Harvard University psychologists. Their work included extensive pre-interviews to find a sampling of patients who said that even though they wanted to follow doctors' orders, they stopped taking prescription medicines for reasons they did not fully understand. The psychologists conducted hour-long, "hidden motivations" interviews with those individuals to understand the underlying cause of their actions.

Among the findings were:

• Twenty-four percent came to see that taking prescribed medications interfered with personal priorities like taking care of family members, compromising social aspects of their lives or finding it to be just another in a long line of chores to keep track of.
• Twenty-one percent came to see taking their medicine made them feel like they were losing control of their lives and sometimes by stopping their medicine they felt they were resisting authority.
• Seventeen percent came to see they felt taking medicine gave them an unfavorable identity, made them feel old or they wanted others to view them in a more favorable light.
• Sixteen percent came to see they felt they knew better than their doctors what was good for them; some believed they should take care of their health through exercise and diet.
• Sixteen percent came to see they were wary of the health care and pharmaceutical industries and did not want to become dependent on medications or suffer unknown side-effects.
• Six percent came to see they did not want to change their personal routines, so they simply put off taking their medications.

"We are looking at patient non-adherence from every angle in an effort to solve this problem," said Dr. Troyen A. Brennan, MD, MPH, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of CVS Caremark. "We are working with researchers to study claims data. We launched a research partnership with behavioral economists and social marketing experts to understand patient behavior.  This review by psychologists adds to those efforts and gives us yet another view of consumers as we work to improve pharmacy care."

In addition, CVS Caremark is continually testing new communications strategies and new programs to drive adherence among its PBM population, taking results of this study and other initiatives into consideration to develop programs that might help improve adherence rates.

The work complements CVS Caremark's previously announced three-year collaboration with Harvard and Brigham and Women's Hospital to research pharmacy claims data to better understand patient behavior around medication adherence.  In addition, earlier this month the company launched a Behavior Change Research Partnership with academic leaders from Carnegie Mellon University, Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business and the University of Pennsylvania's Medical School and Wharton School of Business to develop insights into consumer actions around health challenges through the lens of behavioral economics and social marketing.

CVS Caremark is undertaking these studies because patient non-adherence to essential chronic medications is widely recognized as a barrier to improving public health and a cause of increasing medical costs.  Past studies show one-quarter of people receiving prescriptions never fill their first prescription, and patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes and coronary artery disease adhere to their ongoing medication regimen only about half of the time. Non-adherence to essential medications is a frequent cause of preventable hospitalizations and patient illness, with costs to the U.S. health care system estimated at about $300 billion annually.

About CVS Caremark

CVS Caremark is the largest pharmacy health care provider in the United States. Through our integrated offerings across the entire spectrum of pharmacy care, we are uniquely positioned to provide greater access, to engage plan members in behaviors that improve their health, and to lower overall health care costs for health plans, plan sponsors and their members. CVS Caremark is a market leader in mail order pharmacy, retail pharmacy, specialty pharmacy, and retail clinics, and is a leading provider of Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plans. As one of the country's largest pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs), we provide access to a network of more than 64,000 pharmacies, including approximately 7,000 CVS/pharmacy® stores that provide unparalleled service and capabilities. Our clinical expertise includes one of the industry's most comprehensive disease management programs. General information about CVS Caremark is available through the Company's Web site at http://info.cvscaremark.com.

SOURCE CVS Caremark