Kristin Casady, MA, Editorial Director, Geriatrics & Aging.
The association between low rates of adherence to medical treatments and poor health outcomes has been well documented, occurring even when the treatment under study was a placebo.1 Studies of adherence interventions should be of significant interest to those working with older adults, who are most likely to be on polypharmacy, yet such investigations are few when compared with the large number of trials for individual drugs and treatments.2 A recent issue of the British Medical Journal presents details of a study that investigated the effects of periodic telephone counselling by a pharmacist on medication compliance and mortality among community-dwelling patients on polypharmacy (>5 drugs).3
