MEASUREMENT OF PATIENT COMPLIANCE

The compliance of 91 diabetic patients using oral antidiabetic was stu died. Patient compliance was measured using four different methods. Pa tients received their medication in a Medication Event Monitoring Syst em (MEMS)-container. Each time the patient went back to the pharmacy f or refill prescriptions, the number of tablets left in the container w ere counted. Pharmacy records were used to study the number of days of delay in getting the next refill. At the end of the study, a question naire was sent to every patient. Using MEMS asa standard, the results show that pill count and refill data overestimate the compliance of th is group of patients. The MEMS data also show that the compliance data using only the number of tablets may be biased, because of possible o verconsumption. Pill count does not show a correlation with compliance as measured by MEMS. The relation between compliance as measured with MEMS and refill compliance is weak.