We’ve all heard of a credit score, but did you know you can receive a score pertaining to the likelihood that you’ll take your prescribed medication? The business of scoring consumers isn’t limited to financial matters anymore. FICO, most commonly known for its scores evaluating people’s credit risk, has created a way of measuring a patient’s risk of medication non-compliance, called the Medication Adherence Score.
As I’ve shared, up to 50% of patients walk out of their doctor’s office not understanding what they are told to do. In addition, nearly three-fourths of Americans do not follow doctor’s orders for taking prescription drugs, an issue that is associated with 125,000 patient deaths each year, according to the National Consumers League.
There are various reasons why healthcare providers want to help patients take their medications correctly. First, non-adherence can lead to poorer treatment results, which threatens the health of the individual, and potentially those around the patient. Second, the need for follow-up care (often of a more serious nature) increases dramatically. Non-adherence to medications not only affects a patient’s health, but also the cost of care. As I pointed out in a previous blog post, poor patient compliance costs about $290 billion either directly or indirectly in healthcare costs.
So which patients are likely to take their medications correctly and which ones are likely to stray from the plan?
It may surprise you that to generate a person’s medication adherence score, FICO claims it can calculate compliance based on demographic information. The company uses data that’s unrelated to your health or medical history and instead looks at information such as driving records, history of paying rent or utility bills and the length of time you’ve lived at a certain address. For example, it takes into account the size of your household because those who live alone have an increased chance of skipping their medications. Owning a car, on the other hand, is a good indicator that you’ll take your medications as prescribed. Being neither very young nor very old is another good sign. FICO thinks that many of these indicators demonstrate whether a person will be a responsible and predictable patient.
FICO highlights three key benefits of its Medication Adherence Score:
- Effectively identify medication non-compliance
Applying the same analytics used to create the FICO Credit Score and using third-party data sources, the Medication Adherence Score can predict each patient’s adherence over the next year. - Improve program planning and targeting
Estimate the right level of action across the patient base to optimize care, case and utilization programs—setting a universal baseline assessment on which survey results or other information can be overlaid when available. - Take a proactive approach to compliance management
The Medication Adherence Score is a predictive model that allows you to identify and proactively address adherence problems before they occur, rather than after they occur.
Do you think FICO’s non-health related indicators will give an accurate score? I welcome your comments and thoughts!
-Susan
Tags: medication adherence, medications
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