Seniors Preventative Health Intervention Program

To assess whether a pharmacist in consultation with family physicians can improve medication management for older patients thus reducing hospital admissions, health services and costs due to inappropriate medication use.

To assess whether a pharmacist in consultation with family physicians can improve medication management for older patients thus reducing hospital admissions, health services and costs due to inappropriate medication use.

Research Summary

Older adults who live in the community are responsible for managing their own use of medications on a day-to-day basis. With many elderly people living with multiple, chronic health conditions, a high percentage of them are taking several medications at a time. Medication-related hospitalizations among this population is a significant problem and can be caused by a variety of factors: the number and types of medications; the impacts of combining prescribed, over-the-counter and herbal/traditional medicines, and the appropriateness of current medication regimens in the face of an individual’s changing health status.

Current Canadian health care trends emphasize the importance of developing Home Care Programs to serve the growing number of elderly and disabled people living in the community. Preventive home visits by a team of nurses, pharmacists and physicians have been proven effective in reducing drug-related hospital admissions and inappropriate use of medication.

The group’s research focus is to determine the effectiveness of adding a pharmacist to the Home Care Team in the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) to promote improved medication management for community-dwelling Home Care clients and reduced hospital admissions, medical services, and health care costs. The study will focus on clients who are 75 and over, taking 6 or more medications, and enrolled in the VIHA South Home Care Program.

The team will track the number of hospital admissions per client in the 12 months following the intervention, and will also assess the number of physician and specialist visits, the number of hospital emergency room visits, whether the client was admitted into a long-term care facility, and the resulting health care costs.

Research Results

The study was terminated in September 2007 due to difficulty in recruiting a sufficient number of subjects.