Impact of patient-centered prescription medication labels on adherence in community pharmacy

Prescription medication labels are often constructed in a manner which hinders safe and appropriate use of medicines. The United States Pharmacopeia released voluntary standards to revise medication labels in an effort to support patients' understanding and improve medication use.

To examine the impact of label changes on medication adherence before and after pharmacy implementation of the United States Pharmacopeia patient-centered prescription medication label standards.

This study used a retrospective pre-post cohort design. Prescription fill claims data were obtained from a community health plan serving Medicaid patients for 1 independent community pharmacy organization across 8 retail pharmacy sites. We calculated medication possession ratios (MPR) and proportion of days covered (PDC) for medications used for contraception, asthma, hypertension, and depression from 15 months before to 13 months after implementation of the label changes.

Findings showed significant increases in mean MPR for asthma controller (increased by 0.111 [t = 0.290, P<0.0001]), antihypertensives (increased by 0.062 [t = 0.146, P < 0.0002]), and contraceptives medications (increased 0.133 [t = 0.209, P < 0.0001]) from preintervention to postintervention periods. Results also revealed increases in mean PDC for asthma controllers (increased by 0.193 [t = 0.267, P < 0.0001]), antihypertensives (increased by 0.067 [t = 0.175, P = 0.049]), and contraceptives (increased by 0.111 [t = 0.208, P < 0.0119]) from preintervention to postintervention periods.

We report an association between a change to more patient-centered prescription medication labels and increased medication adherence based on MPR and PDC among Medicaid recipients.