Talmadge King Jr., MD, dean of the UCSF School of Medicine, tells the story of an ER physician who had lost a document and was searching frantically for it in the garbage bins behind Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. What he found instead in the mountain of rubbish were crumpled prescription slips that patients had tossed in hospital trash cans throughout the week.

“Going forward, the conversations that ER doctor had with his patients changed. They became, ‘Well, you need these drugs. Which can you afford? How can I help?’” relates King. “Often it’s not that the patients aren’t adhering to advice. It’s that they can’t pay for the drugs, didn’t understand why they should take them, or simply that they did not feel the doctor even listened to them.”

Read the entire article about UCSF efforts here:  https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2016/01/401251/poor-health