Pharmacy Quality Solutions (PQS) has released its 2023 Industry Trend Report in Pharmacy Quality, which focuses on the influence of socio-demographic and utilization factors on medication adherence measure rates.

Below is a brief summary of the 2023 Trend Report findings:

The first chapter highlights the impact of socio-demographic factors, including age, gender, and low-income subsidy (LIS) status, on adherence rates for Cholesterol, Diabetes, and Renin Angiotensin System Antagonists (RASA) Proportion of Days Covered (PDC) measures.

Ch1 – Socio-Demographic Factors Related to Medication Adherence

• Mean age is higher for adherent patients, but only by a year or less
• Measure rates are higher for men than women, though not for all measures
• Measure rates are lower for members who are eligible for low income subsidy

Ch2 – Utilization Factors Related to Adherence

The second chapter examines how adherence can be impacted by factors such as drug switching within a measurement year and the utilization of extended fills.

• Measure rates are lower when including only patients for Cholesterol PDC and RASA PDC who switched
  medications during the year
• When stratifying patients by whether they had only extended fills, a mix of extended and non-extended fills,
  or only non-extended fills, measure rates are highest for those with extended fills by a large margin
• Whether a member was new to the plan or not made little difference in measure rates
• For every drug or drug class, the measure rate for those patients who positively had a fill of the medication
  was higher, with the exception of GLP1s

The 2023 Industry Trend Report in Pharmacy Quality can be downloaded by clicking the button below. We hope that the insights from the report support your medication quality strategies. We look forward to working with you and other healthcare quality improvement advocates to support the advancement of pharmacy in healthcare.

If you have ideas, comments, or feedback for next year’s report, please reach out at [email protected].

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