During a severe financial crisis, it is a priority to use scientific evidence to identify factors that enable therapeutic compliance by patients. This study aimed to evaluate a possible association between the number of patients who attended a medical appointment and had medicine prescribed and the number of these same patients who purchased the prescribed medicine and whether the level of reimbursement was a deciding factor. We perform a correlation analysis at primary care centers in Portugal, between 2010 and 2012 (n = 96). We found a moderate to high positive association, which is statistical significant, between the number of the patients with medicines dispensing and medicines reimbursement levels. The correlation coefficient varies from .5 to .63 (P < .01). The compliance increases along with the increase in the reimbursement levels.
Keywords: access to care; community health centers; efficiency; health economics; primary care.