The ATPIII guideline "Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults," includes recommendations on strategies to improve adherence by patients and providers. Adult Treatment Panel III (ATPIII) guideline recommends the use of state-of-the-art multidisciplinary methods that target the patients, providers and health delivery systems to achieve maximum adherence to primary and secondary prevention efforts. The following table summarizes the ATPIII recommendations regarding adherence.
Interventions to Improve Adherence
Focus on the Patient
• Simplify medication regimens
• Provide explicit patient instruction and use good counseling techniques to teach the patient how to follow the prescribed treatment
• Encourage the use of prompts to help patients remember treatment regimens
• Use systems to reinforce adherence and maintain contact with the patient
• Encourage the support of family and friends
• Reinforce and reward adherence
• Increase visits for patients unable to achieve treatment goal
• Increase the convenience and access to care
• Involve patients in their care through self-monitoring Focus on the Physician and Medical Office • Teach physicians to implement lipid treatment guidelines
• Use reminders to prompt physicians to attend to lipid management
• Identify a patient advocate in the office to help deliver or prompt care
• Use patients to prompt preventive care
• Develop a standardized treatment plan to structure care
• Use feedback from past performance to foster change in future care
• Remind patients of appointments and follow up missed appointments Focus on the Health Delivery System • Provide lipid management through a lipid clinic
• Utilize case management by nurses
• Deploy telemedicine
• Utilize the collaborative care of pharmacists
• Execute critical care pathways in hospitals Source: (National Cholesterol Education Program, 2001 [R]) |
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