Drug companies are beginning to realize that a huge proportion of patients aren’t taking their medications as often as they’re prescribed. And they’re finally concluding that they could make more money if people actually took them all daily. An NYT article looks at the trend , including drug companies calling patients and encouraging them to continue taking their meds. It brings up a number of good points: what happens when the medication goes generic? If you switch to a different version of the same medication class, does the patient get kicked out of the program?

I’ve always thought that drug companies should be handing out free weekly or monthly pill boxes to patients with polypharmacy to increase adherence (it’s adherence , NYT, not compliance ), but that’s just me.

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