Health: Paying a patient to take the pills

Paying patients to take their pills may be an effective way of ensuring that they complete the course and keep hospital appointments. Many patients stop taking drugs as soon as they feel better but before the cause of their illness is eradicated. This increases costs by wasting drugs and makes the illness more difficult and more expensive to treat in the future.

Kidney patients who stop taking anti-rejection drugs may need a new transplant, and sufferers from tuberculosis prescribed a cocktail of antibiotics for several months may continue to spread the disease if they stop taking them early.

In ten of eleven trials in the United States, in which financial incentives were offered, patients receiving them stuck to their treatment better, according to a study in the British Medical Journal.