Efficacy of Pharmacists’ Intervention in Preventing Polypharmacy in Hospitals for Chronic Care

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the efficacy of intervention by pharmacists who proactively recommended prescriptions to physicians as a countermeasure against polypharmacy. Based on the “Guidelines for medical treatment and its safety in the elderly 2015” and clinical findings at the time hospitalization, drugs that the patients were taking during admission were continued, discontinued, or replaced with other drugs. For many patients, the discontinued drugs constituted of laxatives, expectorants, hypolipidemics, intestinal regulators, hypouricemic agents, and electrolyte supplements, most of which were not in the guidelines. The proportion of patients for whom the number of medications was decreased by at least one was significantly higher in the intervention group than in the non-intervention group. Therefore, the benefits of decreased drug expense were more prominent in the former group than in the latter.