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Patients who have had heart attacks are urged to take medications such as beta-blockers to help prevent another heart attack and increase their survival rates. Unfortunately, over half these patients eventually stop taking these drugs for a variety of reasons, including concern over side effects and forgetting to fill prescriptions. Stephen Soumerai, Richard Platt, and Kim Lane participated in a study published in the March Archives of Internal Medicine that piloted a low cost intervention with patients from four US health care organizations (including HPHC) that increased the percentage of patients who continued to take these medications by 17%.
The study, which was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), consisted of two personalized letters mailed a month apart that described the importance of lifetime use of beta blockers, information about management of side-effects, and the importance of remembering to refill prescriptions. There was also brief mention of other treatments such as statins, ACE inhibitors and aspirin. The intervention cost only $5 to $10 per patient.
Over 13 million adult Americans have coronary artery disease and more than 7 million have had heart attacks. Patients who have heart attacks are twice as likely to die in the year after the event if they stop taking beta-blockers. This intervention, which can be easily replicated in other health care settings, proved to be a low cost and simple way to save lives. Click here for abstract.
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