Andrea Baer on the Non-Financial Restrictions That Influence Medication Adherence

There are non-financial barriers that contribute to why a patient does not adhere to their medications, according to Andrea Baer, director of Patient Advocacy for Mended Hearts.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What barriers other than financial ones are there that prevent patients from being adherent to their medications?

Everybody always thinks of money as a barrier, but if you are looking at non-financial barriers—if there is a transportation issue if you are in a rural community and can’t get to a specialty pharmacy or a compounding pharmacy and you can’t get the drug. If you can’t access the information about the drugs or if you have side effects of the drugs and you don’t understand them and you don’t know who to talk to for it to be resolved, then you may just stop taking the medication.

So, it’s not just about financial barriers, I think that there a multitude of social, emotional, and economic reasons that people don’t adhere to their medication.