News Feature | February 4, 2016

EHRS Hold Key Medication Adherence Data

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

How EHR Prior Authorization Can Help Your Health IT Clients Promote Medication Adherence

Researchers from Thomas Jefferson University and Christiana Care Health System determined EHR data could contain valuable information about patients’ medication adherence.

Ensuring patients adhere to their medication schedule is a constant challenge, but researchers now say EHR data may be the key to tracking medication adherence. According to a study published in the American Journal of Managed Care, claims data within an EHR may serve as a foundation for ongoing medication monitoring and improving adherence.

“The recent adoption of e-prescribing systems has made prescription fill information increasingly available to providers within their native electronic health record. This access to aggregated, multi-payer pharmacy data creates an opportunity to identify and address primary non-adherence in clinical practice, possibly even in real time,” the study report states.

Health IT Analytics explains researchers focused on patients prescribed a new antihypertensive medication. These patients visited a multi-specialty practice with 14 primary care sites in northern Delaware and surrounding communities that all share the same EHR.

They were able to match prescriptions with pharmacy claims listed in the EHR. This helped to determine whether patients filled the medication within 30 days of prescription. According to iHealth Beat, 66 percent of participants had filled their prescription within 30 days and of those medication-adherent patients, 78 percent filled their prescriptions on the day it was issued.

“This access to aggregated, multi-payer pharmacy data creates an opportunity to identify and address primary non-adherence in clinical practice, possibly even in real time,” wrote the authors. “Our findings suggest that the increased availability of medication fill histories in clinical practice can provide objective insight into a patient’s medication adherence, and may provide a foundation for targeted interventions to improve primary non-adherence.”