Medication Adherence – All That, Then Nothing

 Originally published as a guest post on the PM360

Electronic health record (EHR) is on most pharma media plans now. But the conversation worth having is this: are your EHR campaigns being asked to do what they’re fully capable of doing for your brand’s strategic imperatives?

I’ve spent years designing these programs with brand teams and their agencies, and the gap between being inside the EHR and using it well is wider than most plans account for. Brands closing that gap are seeing results that other channels can’t replicate.

EHR Is the Moment Where Upstream Marketing Has to Land

A brand can invest years, and sometimes nine figures, before a single prescription is written. TV, journals, rep details, peer-to-peer programs—all of it is designed to prime the market and it all matters.

But awareness isn’t activation. At some point, a prescriber opens a patient’s chart and the treatment they’re most likely to reach for is the one that has served them and their patients well. All of that upstream investment must show up and reinforce itself right here, in this moment, to make the final leg of the journey.

The EHR is where brand recognition either becomes clinical action or gets left behind. Think of it as the bottom of the funnel—not an afterthought at the end of the media plan. It’s the part of the plan that makes the rest of it pay off.

The EHR is the Only Place Where Everything Converges

Three things set the EHR apart from every other channel in the mix.

It’s a required environment; a prescriber must be there to do their job. According to AMA research, EHR time during patient hours ranges from 2.5 hours per day for anesthesiologists to 8.4 hours for infectious disease specialists, with the average landing at 5.8 hours.¹ This is not a channel prescribers wander into—it’s the backbone of their practice.

It’s the only place where patient-level clinical data and provider prescribing behavior exist in the same view—at the same moment. That’s not just a targeting advantage; that’s a different category of access entirely.

Real efficacy work happens here. All the upstream marketing builds recognition, but the EHR is where you drive behavior. A prescriber is in front of a patient right now and making a decision.

That’s the moment to surface:

• Clinical education

• Patient support offers

• Dosing guidance for a patient who hasn’t titrated up

• To see a reminder about routing a prescription to the right pharmacy

• Or, to make sure that the treatment of choice is affordable and that the patient has access to affordability offers

Prescribers are deeply committed to their EHR as a clinical guidance tool—one they trust to surface the right information for compliant, efficient care.

When brand messaging earns a place in that environment by being genuinely useful and well-timed, it benefits from that same trust. It doesn’t feel like an interruption; it feels like the system is working for them.

“57% of providers are either completely unwilling or only moderately willing to consult resources outside their EHR to find drug affordability information.¹”

Research supports it. For example, does your brand have a copay program to promote? 57% of providers are either completely unwilling or only moderately willing to consult resources outside their EHR to find drug affordability information.² A copay information campaign helps a prescriber help their patient when the time is right.

Count Scripts, Not Clicks

The goal of a well-designed EHR campaign is not to drive a provider or patient to your brand website. It’s to deliver the right information at the right moment and see what happens next in terms of actual prescribing behavior.

EHR campaigns are built around test and control methodology, tracked at the prescriber level, with meaningful data available within a quarter.

Program objectives are set from the start: new patient starts, 90-day fill rates, refill behavior. The KPIs map directly to brand business goals, not media engagement metrics.

Across cardiovascular, diabetes, immunology, migraine, respiratory, ADHD, depression, and women’s health, ConnectiveRx data shows that EHR messaging aligned to first fill behavior reduces prescription abandonment by 13%–15% and drives an additional 6–16 prescriptions per 100 patients through improved ongoing adherence.³ These results are consistent across therapeutic areas.

The investment required to achieve that is a fraction of what a single month of major media costs and holds near-zero waste, because every impression is delivered against a verified prescriber with a relevant patient in view.

Where to Start with EHR Campaigns

If you’re rethinking how the EHR fits into your plan, here are three honest places to begin:

1. Audit where decisions finalize. Not just where your brand talks and creates awareness, but where the prescribing decisions close. Build from there.

2. How visible is your patient support and affordability information? If these live only on a brand website or in a starter kit, the prescriber doesn’t see it when it matters. The EHR closes that gap.

3. Put EHR point of care in your annual strategic plan alongside payer strategy, hubs, and patient support. Not downstream of them.

The next piece looks at how EHR messaging drives new patient starts—identification, timing, and reaching the right prescriber when a specific patient is already in front of them. The piece after that examines adherence: slower to build, harder to sustain, and where the best campaigns earn their ROI.

REFERENCES:
1. American Medical Association, “Five Physician Specialties That Spend the Most Time in the EHR,” September 2024. ama-assn.org
2. PDR 2024 Member Survey, Phase I
3. ConnectiveRx, “Breaking Through the Adherence Barrier,” 2026 campaign performance data.