Impact of a text messaging pilot program on patient medication adherence

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Behavioral Science
• Pharmaceutical Adherence

Background:

• Medication nonadherence is a significant barrier to effective healthcare, leading to poor patient outcomes and increased healthcare costs.
• Traditional adherence strategies exist, but technological innovations offer new avenues for improvement.
• Cell phone text messaging presents a novel modality to enhance patient medication adherence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess and compare medication adherence rates between patients who voluntarily enrolled in a text message medication reminder program and a carefully matched control group.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of text message reminders in improving adherence to chronic oral medications.

Main Methods:

• A retrospective, observational cohort study was conducted using data from a national pharmacy benefit manager.
• Participants were continuously enrolled members who opted for medication-specific text reminders for chronic oral medications and had corresponding pharmacy claims.
• Propensity score matching was employed to create a control cohort, balancing variables such as medication class, age, sex, and disease burden. Medication adherence was measured as the proportion of days covered (PDC).

Main Results:

• The text message reminder cohort (n=290) demonstrated a significantly higher mean Proportion of Days Covered (PDC) (0.85) compared to the control cohort (n=290) (0.77) (P < 0.001).
• Significant improvements in PDC were observed in the text message group for specific medication classes, including antidiabetic drugs (0.91 vs 0.82, P=0.029) and beta-blockers (0.88 vs 0.71, P=0.006).

Conclusions:

• Enrolling in a text message medication reminder program is associated with substantially higher adherence to chronic oral medications.
• The findings indicate that text message reminder programs are effective in maintaining elevated medication adherence levels over time.