Research to examine non-compliance

The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has appointed PwC Health Advisory Practice to undertake the trial which will include over 100 pharmacies.

The project will will focus on developing and evaluating strategies that assist people who have poor medication compliance based on accurate identification of differing types of non-compliance.

It will investigate possible indicators and causes for non-compliance and propose specific patient-centred approaches tailored to address these causes.

The research team will also explore linkages with existing professional services such as dose administration aids, patient medication profile and home medicines review.

Kos Sclavos, Guild national president, said non-compliance with medication is a challenging and complex problem globally, resulting in poorer health outcomes and increased health care costs.

"About 40 per cent of people who are non-compliant with their medication regimen are not so intentionally," he said.

"With the introduction of MedsIndex, an IT resource already being used to measure patients' compliance of medications, community pharmacy is at the fore-front of assisting patients who are non-compliant. Assisting them will have a huge impact on their individual health outcomes and will deliver better value to the health system as a whole."

The research project forms part of the Fourth Community Pharmacy Agreement Research and Development Program, which is managed by the Guild with funding from the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.