Polypharmacy in elderly patients - reducing medication-related problems:
"Medikations-Check up 60+"
Project content
Multimorbidity, the co-occurrence of several diseases, and resulting multimedication, or the use of five or more drugs, is a major challenge for an ageing population and for our health care system in general. The risk that the use of medications will lead to undesirable outcomes rises in line with the number of drugs a patient is taking (e.g. interactions between medicines, the failure to observe restrictions on use, and contraindications).
However, neither a feasible, scientific concept, nor a method to deal with the problem in standard care, yet exists for the adequate management of multimedication. Family doctors, who are responsible for around two-thirds of all prescriptions in Germany, take the problem very seriously and are calling on researchers and policymakers to come up with practical solutions. These must take into account the considerable workload facing family practices, while at the same time be comprehensive enough to solve what are sometimes extremely complicated problems.
The aim of this project is to provide family doctors with evidence-based (scientifically tested) instruments to enable them to monitor prescribed medications in a structured manner. In this way, it is hoped that the risk of multimorbid elderly patients suffering the avoidable negative consequences of multimedication will be minimized.
Project "Medication Check-up 60+" will work on finding answers to the following questions:
- Which multimorbid patients simultaneously using several medications on a lasting basis are at risk of undesirable outcomes?
- What conditions serve to promote and what to hinder the introduction of structured medication monitoring in family health care?
The "Medication Check-up 60+" project will work with the findings of the PRIMUM projects, in which a complex intervention to enable structured medication monitoring was developed and tested. Although the intervention was feasible, there were certain obstacles facing its implementation in practice, one of these being the amount of effort involved.
Sponsorship and cooperation
The project is industry-independent and will be developed and sponsored by the Techniker Krankenkasse statutory health fund.
Team
- Dr. med. Christiane Muth, MPH (principal investigator)
- Dr. med. Beate Müller (research scientist)
- Birgit Kemperdick, MA (project management, study administration)
- Sandra Rauck, Msc. (data management)
External cooperation partners
- Dr. Christian Stock, M.Sc., M.Sc. and Lorenz Uhlmann, M.Sc., Institute of Medical Biometry and Informatics, University Hospital, Heidelberg
- Dr. Ingrid Schubert and Peter Ihle, PMV research group, Cologne
Scientific Advisory Board
- Marjan van den Akker, PhD
Netherlands School of Primary Care Research - CaRe, Department of General Practice, Maastricht University, NL - Prof. Rafael Pereira, DPhil, MSc, MA
Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford, UK - Prof. Jose Valderas Martinez, MD, PhD, MPH
Health Services & Policy Research Group at the University of Exeter Medical School, UK
Family Practice Advisory Board
- Dr. med. Joachim Fessler (Floersheim)
- Dr. med. Alexander Liesenfeld (Amoeneburg-Mardorf)
- Dr. med. Joachim Seffrin (Weiterstadt)