Implications for practice and research

• Poor medication adherence is associated with rehospitalisation and death.

• A single-item self-report medication adherence question provides an efficient indicator to identify patients who may benefit from adherence interventions.

• Researchers can more reliably scale and evaluate adherence interventions across settings and populations if a single question is consistently applied to assess medication use.

Context

Medication adherence in chronic illness is poor, with 40–60% of patients unable to fully adhere to medications.1 Despite decades of research, providers lack tools to identify patients at risk of poor adherence. As a result, allocation of limited resources to help patients is challenging.