I just read an article that I highly recommend you read. This article by Joel White, in the North County Times, (the North County way up thar between San Diego and Riverside, CA), suggests several issues that are important for you to read and know.
Rather than write an extended blog on the subject I’m going to highlight some of the information that Mr. White writes about, hoping that you will click on the link above and read the article in it’s entirety.

I believe his numbers may be partially understated.  In the Medication Adherence community we almost always see numbers of patients and dollars that are in the millions and billions and it’s difficult to comprehend the enormity of the national problem without glazing over. If, as research suggests, the dollar amounts spent for the medical problems incurred ever year near $290 billion, then just imagine how much the problem could save if the entire world were to become responsibly adherent. The U.S. population is near 5% of the world’s population. Do the math.

(All of this substantiates a study by Caremark in 2010 and reported by Drug Store News in January 2011, that concludes that patients with multiple chronic illnesses will save as much as $7,800 (and that’s 2 years ago) when they are fully adherent. )
Here are some of the highlights from the article:

• Increasing medication adherence could avert 700,000 visits to the Emergency Room and 341,000 hospitalizations. That would equate to $8.3 billion. And that’s for diabetics alone.
• Just 10% increased adherence by Asthmatics alone would drop total medical spending for this group by 5%.
• If everyone who has high blood pressure were adherent, it would save about 89,000 deaths per year.
• Chronic illnesses alone account for 75% of all medical spending.
• With adherent cholesterol and hypertension patients, every dollar spent on himedication reduces their total health expenses by 4 or 5 dollars.

Read the article. Takes your meds as prescribed by your doctor.
If you have the need for reminders (as most of us do) or medication management, MedTexter is here to help.