Disaster Victims Need Help Taking Pills as Prescribed

THURSDAY, March 1 (HealthDay News) -- In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many New Orleans residents who needed drugs to control their high blood pressure faced barriers to medication adherence -- taking medications as prescribed without missing doses.

As part of the study, researchers had 78 patients at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation fill out a detailed questionnaire. They found that the patients faced a number of medication adherence problems after the disaster:

• 10 percent of evacuees didn't bring their medicines with them.
• 32 percent didn't bring enough medicine and ran out.
• 15 percent had trouble getting prescriptions filled.
• 30 percent reported a medication change. In some of those cases, the change may have been because the patients had no medications or prescriptions with them when they evacuated. As a result, medical personal had to deduce what drugs the patients were taking before the disaster.

The study authors recommended a number of ways to better plan for medication adherence after disasters:

• The use of electronic medical and prescription records.
• Patients should take at least a one-month supply of medications when they evacuate.
• Patients in disaster-prone areas should develop a plan with their doctors for refilling prescriptions in the event of an evacuation.

"Our study shows that opportunities exist to improve disaster planning and prescription refill processes to increase medication adherence after disasters in older adults," lead author Dr. Marie A. Krousel-Wood, director of the Center for Health Research at Ochsner and clinical professor of epidemiology and community medicine at Tulane Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, said in a prepared statement.

The study was expected to be presented March 1 at the American Heart Association's annual Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention Cconference in Orlando.