Using Dispensing Data to Evaluate Adherence Implementation Rates in Community Pharmacy

Background: Medication non-adherence remains a significant problem for the health care system with clinical, humanistic and economic impact. Dispensing data is a valuable and commonly utilized measure due accessibility in electronic health data. The purpose of this study was to analyze the changes on adherence implementation rates before and after a community pharmacist intervention integrated in usual real life practice, incorporating big data analysis techniques to evaluate Proportion of Days Covered (PDC) from pharmacy dispensing data. Methods: Retrospective observational study. A de-identified database of dispensing data from 20,335 patients (n = 11,257 on rosuvastatin, n = 6,797 on irbesartan, and n = 2,281 on desvenlafaxine) was analyzed. Included patients received a pharmacist-led medication adherence intervention and had dispensing records before and after the intervention. As a measure of adherence implementation, PDC was utilized. Analysis of the database was performed using SQL and Python. Results: Three months after the pharmacist intervention there was an increase on average PDC from 50.2% (SD: 30.1) to 66.9% (SD: 29.9) for rosuvastatin, from 50.8% (SD: 30.3) to 68% (SD: 29.3) for irbesartan and from 47.3% (SD: 28.4) to 66.3% (SD: 27.3) for desvenlafaxine. These rates declined over 12 months to 62.1% (SD: 32.0) for rosuvastatin, to 62.4% (SD: 32.5) for irbesartan and to 58.1% (SD: 31.1) for desvenlafaxine. In terms of the proportion of adherent patients (PDC >= 80.0%) the trend was similar, increasing after the pharmacist intervention from overall 17.4 to 41.2% and decreasing after one year of analysis to 35.3%. Conclusion: Big database analysis techniques provided results on adherence implementation over 2 years of analysis. An increase in adherence rates was observed after the pharmacist intervention, followed by a gradual decrease over time. Enhancing the current intervention using an evidence-based approach and integrating big database analysis techniques to a real-time measurement of adherence could help community pharmacies improve and sustain medication adherence.