Failure to take medication as prescribed can have serious consequences

A prescription to buy Lipitor can help individuals with high cholesterol improve their cardiovascular health and reduce their risk of suffering a heart attack, but the medication is useless if people don't take it.

Evidence suggests that a high number of patients never actually take the medications they are prescribed, a situation known as medication non-compliance. An article in the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out that between 20 and 30 percent of prescriptions are never filled. This leads to $290 billion in avoidable medical spending

Medical professionals told the news source that new tools are making it easier for them to track which patients have not filled their prescriptions, but it can be difficult to tell individuals about the serious health consequences they may face by not taking their medications.

Still, medication non-compliance can be a major health risk. A study published in the Journal of Applied Research showed that 125,000 Americans die each year because they fail to take their medications as prescribed by their doctor.