Primary non-adherence in Portugal: findings and implications

Portugal is currently facing a serious economic and financial crisis, which is dictating some important changes in the health care sector. Some of these measures may potentially influence patients' access to medication and consequently adherence, which will ultimately impact on health status, especially in chronic patients.

This study aimed at providing a snapshot of adherence in patients with chronic conditions in Portugal between March and April 2012.

Community pharmacy in Portugal.

A cross-sectional pilot study was undertaken, where patients were recruited via community pharmacies to a questionnaire study evaluating the number of prescribed and purchased drugs and, when these figures were inconsistent, the reasons for this.

Primary and secondary adherence measures. Failing to purchase prescription items was categorized as primary nonadherence. Secondary nonadherence was attributed to purchasing prescription items, but not taking medicines as prescribed.

Data were collected from 375 patients. Primary nonadherence was identified in 22.8 % of patients. Regardless of the underlying condition, the most commonly reported reason for primary non-adherence was having spare medicines at home ("leftovers"), followed by financial problems. The latter appeared to be related to the class of medicines prescribed. Primary non-adherence was associated with low income (<475 /month; p = 0.026). Secondary non-adherence, assessed by the 7-MMAS was detected in over 50 % of all patients, where unintentional nonadherence was higher than intentional nonadherence across all disease conditions.

This study revealed that more than one fifth of chronic medication users report primary nonadherence (22.8 %) and more than 50 % report secondary nonadherence. Data indicates that the existence of spare medicines and financial constraints occurred were the two most frequent reasons cited for nonadherence (47, 6-64, 8 and 19-45.5 %, depending on the major underlying condition, respectively).