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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Does home based medication review keep older people out of hospital?
— the HOMER randomised controlled trial | | Author(s) | Richard Holland, Elizabeth Lenaghan, Ian Harvey |
| Journal title | British Medical Journal, vol 330, no 7486, 5 February 2005 |
| Pages | pp 293-295 |
| Source | http://www.bmj.com |
| Keywords | Drugs ; Discharged patients ; Admission [hospitals] ; Clinical surveys ; Norfolk ; Suffolk. |
| Annotation | Adverse drug reactions are an important cause of admission to hospital for older people. Participants in this study were 872 patients aged 80+ recruited during emergency admission to hospitals in Norfolk and Suffolk, who subsequently returned to their own homes or warden controlled accommodation, and taking two or more drugs daily on discharge. A pharmacist made two home visits within two and eight weeks of discharge, to educate carers and patients about their drugs, remove out of date drugs, inform general practitioners (GPs) of an adverse drug reaction or interactions, and inform the local pharmacist if a compliance aid was needed. A control group received usual care. By 6 months, 178 readmissions had occurred in the control group, and 234 in the intervention group. 49 deaths occurred in the intervention group, compared with 63 in the control group. The intervention was associated with a significantly higher rate of hospital admissions and did not significantly improve the quality of life (QoL) or reduce deaths. Further research is needed to explain this counterintuitive finding, and to identify more effective methods of medication review. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-050210202 A |
| Classmark | LLD: LFD: LD:QKH: 3G: 8N: 8SU * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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