Dr Patty Taddei-Allen Outlines the Importance of Adherence to MS Therapies

Encouraging patient adherence to medication is very important to managing the cost of multiple sclerosis (MS) therapies, said Patty Taddei-Allen, PharmD, MBA, BCACP, BCGP, director, outcomes research, WelldyneRx.

Transcript

MS therapies are very expensive—are there any strategies you recommend that can help manage these costs?

One of the most important strategies in order to manage MS patients is really to get the adherent on their therapy. As patients become adherent and stay on their medications, particularly those first-line agents, they’re less likely to have relapses and less likely to develop disability later on, as well as reduce the number of relapses. By staying on those first-line agents, which tend to be less expensive than second- or third-line agents, you end up actually decreasing overall prescription drug costs by having patients more adherent to their medication.

What do you recommend to get patients more adherent?

So, to get patients more adherent is actually a very multifactorial process. There’s not just one size fits all. So, it’s really going to have to be very patient specific. There’s different types of learners and different types of patients out there with different levels of health literacy, as well as different levels of understanding and acceptance of their disease state. So, it really takes a pharmacist to be able to use motivational interviewing skills to present the information and have the patient digest that information and understand it. It’s important to not overwhelm patients, because they’re already being overwhelmed with having this disease state and having all these things to know about their drug. So, it’s important to not just do one-time education and call it a day. It’s important to provide ongoing education in small digestible forms of information for patients to really be able to start accepting and understanding their disease state.