Patient-centered interventions to improve medication management and adherence: a qualitative review of research findings

Objective: Patient-centered approaches to improving medication adherence hold promise, but evidence of their effectiveness is unclear. This review reports the current state of scientific research around interventions to improve medication management through four patient-centered domains: shared decision-making, methods to enhance effective prescribing, systems for eliciting and acting on patient feedback about medication use and treatment goals, and medication-taking behavior.

Methods: We reviewed literature on interventions that fell into these domains and were published between January 2007 and May 2013. Two reviewers abstracted information and categorized studies by intervention type.

Results: We identified 60 studies, of which 40% focused on patient education. Other intervention types included augmented pharmacy services, decision aids, shared decision-making, and clinical review of patient adherence. Medication adherence was an outcome in most (70%) of the studies, although 50% also examined patient-centered outcomes.

Conclusions: We identified a large number of medication management interventions that incorporated patient-centered care and improved patient outcomes. We were unable to determine whether these interventions are more effective than traditional medication adherence interventions.

Practice implications: Additional research is needed to identify effective and feasible approaches to incorporate patient-centeredness into the medication management processes of the current health care system, if appropriate.