%0 Journal Article
%T Unintentional non-adherence to chronic prescription medications: How unintentional is it really?
%A Abhijit S Gadkari
%A Colleen A McHorney
%J BMC Health Services Research
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1472-6963-12-98
%X We conducted a cross-sectional survey of adults with asthma, hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, osteoporosis, or depression from the Harris Interactive Chronic Illness Panel. The analytic sample for this study included 24,017 adults who self-identified themselves as persistent to prescription medications for their index disease. They answered three questions on unintentional non-adherence (forgot, ran out, being careless), 11 questions on intentional non-adherence, and three multi-item scales assessing perceived need for medication (k£¿=£¿10), perceived medication concerns (k£¿=£¿6), and perceived medication affordability (k£¿=£¿4). Logistic regression was used to model predictors of each unintentional non-adherence behavior. Baron and Kenny¡¯s regression approach was used to test the mediational effect of unintentional non-adherence on the relationship between medication beliefs and intentional non-adherence. Bootstrapping was employed to confirm the statistical significance of these results.For the index disease, 62% forgot to take a medication, 37% had run out of the medication, and 23% were careless about taking the medication. Common multivariate predictors (p£¿<£¿.001) of the three behaviors were: (1) lower perceived need for medications; (2) more medication affordability problems; (3) worse self-rated health; (4) diabetes or osteoporosis (relative to hypertension); and (5) younger age. Unique statistically-significant predictors of the three behaviors were: (a) ¡®forgot to take medications¡¯ - greater concerns about the index medication and male gender; (b) ¡®run out of medications¡¯ - non-white race, asthma, and higher number of total prescription medications; (c) ¡®being careless¡¯ - greater medication concerns. Mediational tests confirmed the hypothesis that the effect of medication beliefs (perceived need, concerns, and affordability) on intentional non-adherence is mediated through unintentional non-adherence.For our study sample, unintentional non-adherence does
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/12/98