Medicines Compliance and Reimbursement Level in Portugal

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.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC

A person counts once a day per paper. We keep no cookie and no address: a reader is a hash that changes every day. Any month under five reads shows no number.