Enhancing patients' compliance

BMJ 1998;316:393-394 (31 January)

Letters

Enhancing patients’ compliance

Electronic monitoring approaches should be more widely used

Editor–Giuffrida and Torgerson’s paper focuses attentionon a problem that is widely recognised but largely ignored—namely,compliance.¹ Any measure that seeks to improve compliance witha prescribed regimen should be encouraged. As the authors concedein their introduction, however, the main challenge is identifyingthe patients whose compliance is considered to be inadequate.

Assessment of compliance should focus on the individual patient,and thus any approach that is targeted in a general manner atunselected populations is unlikely to be cost effective. Thefundamental problem is that the prescribing clinician is unableto readily identify inadequate compliers and to distinguishthem from poor responders or non-responders. This is not surprisingas there is considerable evidence to indicate that compliancewith a treatment regimen is not determined by age, sex, income,social status, level of educational achievement, or any otherreadily determinable factor. . . . [Full text of this article]