Updated at 3:18 p.m., Thursday, December 6, 2007
Study by Hawaii doctor: elderly want dialogue on drug costs
Advertiser Staff
A new study by a Hawai'i physician has found that four of five senior citizens want doctors to ask them whether they can afford medicines being prescribed.The research by Dr. Chien-Wen Tseng was published in the December issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and found two-thirds of the 1,100 seniors surveyed had difficulty paying for medications. Nine in 10 wanted choices about which medicines to use.
"It's clear from this study that most people want this," said Tseng, who is an associate professor of medicine at the John A. Burns School of Medicine and is a physician investigator at the Pacific Health Research Institute.
"Physicians need to ask and health plans need to get them (doctors) the cost information."
