Mail Order Makes for Better Prescription Adherence

Does it matter whether you buy your prescriptions at a neighborhood pharmacy or if you order them by mail? A preliminary study from Kaiser Permanente and UCLA suggests that people who use mail order are better at sticking to their doctors’ orders. The investigators examined a year’s worth of data from almost 14,000 Kaiser Permanente members in Northern California. Those who got most of their meds by mail stuck to the prescribed regimen about 85 percent of the time. Those who filled the prescriptions at local Kaiser Permanente pharmacies did so about 77 percent of the time. Before recommending that patients switch to mail-order pharmacies, however, the results need to be replicated in a randomized controlled trial.

[American Journal of Managed Care, online Jan. 14, 2010]