FAILURE OF EDUCATIONAL VIDEOTAPES TO IMPROVE MEDICATION COMPLIANCE INA HEALTH MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATION

The value of mailed educational videotapes as a means of enhancing com pliance with drug therapy was studied. Members of a health maintenance organization with a pharmacy claim for benazepril, metoprolol, simvas tatin, or transdermal estrogen were randomly assigned tea study group or a control group. Subjects in the study group were mailed one of fou r videotape programs giving information on the drug prescribed and the inferred disease state. Control subjects received no educational mate rials. Subjects were enrolled from July 1, 1993, through January 2, 19 94. Refill data were collected from July 1, 1993, through April 1, 199 4. The medication possession ratio (MPR) was calculated as the total n umber of days' supply of a drug obtained by a member divided by the nu mber of days between the time of enrollment and April 1, 1994, or the date the member was terminated from the plan. A subject was deemed com pliant if his or her MPR was greater than or equal to 0.80. There were no significant differences in mean MPRs between the study group (n = 1993) and the control group (n = 2253). None of the mean MPRs was grea ter than or equal to 0.80, although 44% of control subjects and 46% of study-group subjects were compliant. Of 97 respondents to a survey ma iled to a randomly selected subset of the study group, almost 87% repo rted that they had viewed the videotapes, and of these subjects, about 88% said they found them very useful or somewhat useful. A one-time m ailing of videotapes to patients, with no individual follow-up, did no t increase compliance with the medications monitored.