Patient Preference and Adherence (Mar 2022)
Barriers and Solutions to Improve Therapeutic Adherence from the Perspective of Primary Care and Hospital-Based Physicians
Abstract
Concepción Carratalá-Munuera,1 Ernesto Cortés-Castell,2 Emilio Márquez-Contreras,3 José Maria Castellano,4,5 María Perez-Paramo,6 Adriana López-Pineda,1 Vicente F Gil-Guillen1 1Department of Clinical Medicine, Miguel Hernandez University, San Juan de Alicante, Spain; 2Department of Pharmacology, Pediatrics, and Organic Chemistry, Miguel Hernandez University, San Juan de Alicante, Spain; 3Primary Health Center of Molino de la Vega, Huelva, Spain; 4Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC), Madrid, Spain; 5Centro Integral de Enfermedades Cardiovasculares (CIEC), Hospital Universitario Monteprincipe, Grupo HM Hospitales, Madrid, Spain; 6Medical Department, Pfizer GEP SLU, Madrid, SpainCorrespondence: Adriana López-Pineda, Miguel Hernandez University, Ctra. Nnal. 332 Alicante-Valencia s/n, San Juan de Alicante, 03550, Spain, Tel +1 34 965919309, Email [email protected]: To identify the barriers affecting treatment adherence in patients with chronic disease and to determine solutions through the physician’s opinion of primary care and hospital settings.Methods: An observational study using the nominal group technique was performed to reach a consensus from experts. A structured face-to-face group discussion was carried out with physicians with more than 10 years of experience in the subject of treatment adherence/compliance in either the primary care setting or the hospital setting. The experts individually rated a list of questions using the Likert scale and prioritized the top 10 questions to identify barriers and seek solutions afterward. The top 10 questions that obtained the maximum score for both groups of experts were prioritized. During the final discussion group, participating experts analyzed the prioritized items and debated on each problem to reach consensual solutions for improvement.Results: A total of 17 professionals experts participated in the study, nine of them were from a primary care setting. In the expert group from the primary care setting, the proposed solution for the barrier identified as the highest priority was to simplify treatments, measure adherence and review medication. In the expert group from the hospital setting, the proposed solution for the barrier identified as the highest priority was training on motivational clinical interviews for healthcare workers undergraduate and postgraduate education. Finally, the expert participants proposed implementing an improvement plan with eight key ideas.Conclusion: A consensual improvement plan to facilitate the control of therapeutic adherence in patients with chronic disease was developed, taking into account expert physicians’ opinions from primary care and hospital settings about barriers and solutions to address therapeutic adherence in patients with chronic disease.Keywords: treatment adherence and compliance, chronic disease, general practitioners, family practice, hospital medicine, consensus
