MONDAY, Nov. 13, 2006 (HealthDay News) -- A special pharmacy care program encourages elderly patients to take all their medications, which can boost their long-term health, U.S. researchers report.
The study found that the program -- which includes education about medications, regular follow-up by pharmacists, and dispensing medications using time-specified blister packs -- increased medication adherence by more than 30 percent.
"We need to operationally figure out how to do this. There's so much effort going into figuring out which drugs are efficacious and so little in getting patients to take their pills," said researcher Dr. Allen Taylor, chief of cardiology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
"It's the delivery of clinical pharmacy care, which makes education, follow-up and custom medication available to patients. It's a model of pharmacy care that we don't think of," Taylor added at a news conference Monday at the American Heart Association's annual meeting in Chicago.
In their study, his team noted that, "barriers to medication adherence are numerous, but include the prescription of complex medication regimens, treatment of asymptomatic conditions and convenience factors. These factors are particularly prevalent among the elderly population, placing them at increased risk for medication nonadherence."
When patients fail to take their medications are required, the end result is often worsening illness and more, expensive hospital care.
The study will appear in the Dec. 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association but was released early for the AHA meeting.
The researchers studied 174 patients, average age 78, who took an average of nine different medications a day and were enrolled in a six-month pharmacy care intervention. When the six-month trial period ended, 159 of the patients were randomized to continue the pharmacy care program or return to their usual care for an additional six months.
At the beginning of the first phase, average medication adherence was 61.2 percent.
"After six months of intervention, medication adherence increased to 96.9 percent," the study authors noted.
"Six months after randomization, the persistence of medication adherence decreased to 69.1 percent among those patients assigned to usual care, whereas it was sustained at 95.5 percent in pharmacy care," they wrote.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of General Medical Sciences has more about seniors and medicines.
