The data: Among people who take a prescription drug, 65% say they face barriers to regularly accessing their medication, according to a recent TelyRx survey of over 1,200 US adults. Top challenges to consistent medication access include insurance or cost concerns, pharmacy stock or access issues, difficulty getting refill appointments with doctors, and competing demands that leave patients too busy to visit the pharmacy.

Medication gaps tend to recur. Many respondents ration doses to avoid running out, while others run out before they can get a refill. Among those who have skipped a dose or run out of medication, 79% did so more than once in the past year, including 23% who did so four or more times.

Why it matters: For most patients, a missed refill is more than an inconvenience, and for some it can have serious health consequences.

Among people who have skipped or delayed a medication:

• 63% say the prescription is important to their health, including 44% who think they’d struggle to function normally and 19% who say going without it could put them at risk of hospitalization or death.
• 31% say they’d notice the effects of not being on treatment but would still function normally.
• Only 5% say it would have essentially no harmful impact on their health.

Medication nonadherence, whether a patient intentionally stops treatment or can’t stay on it, can cause serious health complications. Missing blood pressure or cholesterol medications, for example, can raise cardiovascular risk, while stopping antibiotics too soon can cause infections to return. Overall, medication nonadherence contributes to roughly 125,000 preventable deaths annually, according to the American Heart Association.

Implications for healthcare and pharma marketers: Pharma marketers should prioritize keeping patients on therapy as much as getting them to start. Avoidable prescription interruptions undermine what drug advertisers spend on patient acquisition, and preventing them means removing practical barriers to obtaining medications.

Marketers should partner with pharmacies and healthcare providers to identify why patients struggle to take or refill prescriptions, then deliver tailored support. That can include copay assistance, help obtaining prescription renewals or scheduling follow-up appointments, access to on-demand care when appropriate, and connections to pharmacies with medications in stock.

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