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M H Beers

Publications and source records attributed to M H Beers.

31 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1992

Computer-assisted drug data collection.

Computerized systems for recording information about medication prescribing and use are important for studies in health services and pharmacoepidemiology. Such systems, if properly designed, can facilitate analysis as well as data collection. Although drug information systems exist for pharmacy service delivery applications, there are currently no descriptions of systems developed primarily for research applications in this area. This paper describes a computerized data collection system, developed for researchers, usable on portable equipment, and containing error checking features; the system has been extensively tested in over 850 study subjects taking part in a study of medication use in nursing homes that examines the impact of educational interventions for doctors and nurses on prescribing practices.

Clinical Pharmacy Information Systems↗
PubMed1992

Compliance with medication orders among the elderly after hospital discharge.

Patient compliance with medication prescriptions in the period immediately following hospital discharge should be of concern to all hospital personnel responsible for the appropriate use of medications, notably Pharmacy and Therapeutics and Quality Assurance Committees. We reviewed the medical records of patients over age 65 discharged from one acute-care hospital. Two days after discharge, we contacted subjects by phone and determined which medications they were taking and at what frequency. We compared discharge orders for medication use with actual use, as determined by self-reports. Of the 44 patients for whom we had complete data, 64% used at least one medication that was not ordered by the physician at discharge, and 73% failed to use at least one medication according to the way it was ordered. Of all drugs ordered at discharge, 32% were not taken at all. Hospital personnel should evaluate their discharge procedures and test techniques to improve compliance in discharged elderly patients.

Aged↗
PubMed1992

Choosing quality of care measures based on the expected impact of improved care on health.

Consumers, payers, and policymakers are demanding to know more about the quality of the services they are purchasing or might purchase. The information provided, however, is often driven by data availability rather than by epidemiologic and clinical considerations. In this article, we present an approach for selecting topics for measuring technical quality of care, based on the expected impact on health of improved quality. This approach employs data or estimates on disease burden, efficacy of available treatments, and the current quality of care being provided. We use this model to select measures that could be used to measure the quality of care in health plans, but the proposed framework could also be used to select quality of care measures for other purposes or in other contexts (for example, to select measures for hospitals). Given the limited resources available for quality assessment and the policy consequences of better information on provider quality, priorities for assessment efforts should focus on those areas where better quality translates into improved health.

Breast Neoplasms↗
PubMed1991

Screening recommendations for the elderly.

BACKGROUND: Studies have documented the potential contributions of preventive health care programs. Yet little is known about which screening tests should be included in public health programs for older persons. This study offers recommendations regarding these tests. METHODS: The recommendations come from synthesizing the findings of the US Preventive Services Task Force, the literature, and the consensus of experts in geriatrics, gerontology, and health policy research. The literature was evaluated to identify methodologically sound studies of the prevalence of selected disorders and benefits and availability of screening procedures for those disorders. Experts from various fields specializing in the care of the elderly formed panels to assist in evaluating the literature and providing further information from gerontological and public health perspectives. RESULTS: We recommend vision testing for refractive error; inspection of the skin surface for fungal infection and skin cancer, drug eruptions, and xerosis; a history for symptoms of xerosis; audiometric testing for presbycusis; surveys for hearing loss; otoscopic inspection for cerumen impaction; dental examination for caries; measurement of blood pressure for hypertension; and breast examination and mammography for cancer. CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggests that these screening procedures are useful for public health screening programs. More information is needed on the effects of screening services on the health and functioning of older persons.

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PubMed1991

Explicit criteria for determining inappropriate medication use in nursing home residents. UCLA Division of Geriatric Medicine.

Increasing attention is being paid to inappropriate medication use in nursing homes. However, criteria defining the appropriate or inappropriate use of medication in this setting are not readily available and are not uniform. We used a two-round survey, based on Delphi methods, with 13 nationally recognized experts to reach consensus on explicit criteria defining the inappropriate use of medications in a nursing home population. The criteria were designed to use pharmacy data with minimal additional clinical data so that they could be applied to chart review or computerized data sets. The 30 factors agreed on by this method identify inappropriate use of such commonly used categories of medications as sedative-hypnotics, antidepressants, antipsychotics, antihypertensives, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents, oral hypoglycemics, analgesics, dementia treatments, platelet inhibitors, histamine2 blockers, antibiotics, decongestants, iron supplements, muscle relaxants, gastrointestinal antispasmodics, and antiemetics. These criteria may be useful for quality assurance review, health services research, and clinical practice guidelines. The method used to establish these criteria can be used to update and expand the guidelines in the future.

Aged↗
PubMed1990

Potential adverse drug interactions in the emergency room. An issue in the quality of care.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To determine how often emergency department physicians prescribe medications that can adversely interact with other medications that their patients are already taking, which patients are at highest risk for potential adverse reactions, and which medications most frequently lead to adverse interactions. DESIGN: Survey of elderly persons and other adults seeking care at an emergency department. PATIENTS: Four-hundred twenty-four randomly selected adults seeking care at a university-affiliated hospital emergency department. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: We evaluated 424 randomly selected visits to a hospital emergency department made by 186 persons over age 65 and 238 younger adults; all of the subjects were discharged without hospital admission. Forty-seven percent of visits led to added medication, and in 10% of the visits in which at least one medication was added, a new medication added a potential adverse interaction. The interactions were determined by a computer program, were reviewed using explicit criteria, and were excluded if of uncertain or trivial clinical significance, rare, or not established for that specific drug. The number of medications used at presentation was the best predictor of whether a potential interaction would be introduced. CONCLUSIONS: In the emergency departments studied, a medication history was recorded on every patient and was available to physicians, but physicians did not routinely screen for potential drug interactions. Further safeguards are needed to protect patients from receiving medications that could produce adverse interactions.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Appropriateness of acute medical care for the elderly: an analysis of the literature.

Over the past 30 years, an explosion in health care expenditures has occurred. Prior to 1960, health care accounted for 4.4% of the U.S. Gross National Product; today it is 11%. Before rational solutions to controlling this rise can be proposed, we must determine whether the care that we are currently paying for is appropriate to the needs of the elderly. This paper analyzes the literature regarding appropriateness of acute care provided to the elderly. We identified 17 articles that explicitly cited appropriate or inappropriate care (including under-, over- and misuse) provided in hospital and ambulatory settings and for procedures, and 19 articles that presented data on the appropriateness of medication use in the elderly. Virtually every study included in this review found at least double-digit levels of inappropriate care. Perhaps as much as one-fifth to one-quarter of acute hospital services or procedures were felt to be used for equivocal or inappropriate reasons, and two-fifths to one-half of the medications studied were overused in outpatients. The few studies that examined underuse or misuse of services also documented the existence of these phenomena. This was especially true for the ambulatory care of chronic physical and mental conditions and concerned the use of low-cost technologies (visits, preventive services, some medications). Thus, we conclude that there appears to be a substantial problem in the matching of acute services to the needs of elderly patients. This mismatch occurs both in terms of overuse and underuse, at least for areas where research has been conducted.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1990

The accuracy of medication histories in the hospital medical records of elderly persons.

Medication histories written in medical records are important sources of information for clinicians and researchers. Medication histories in outpatient records are frequently inaccurate; the accuracy of the histories in hospital records has not previously been studied. We evaluated the accuracy of medication histories recorded in hospital medical records of 122 persons over the age of 65 at three sites, comparing the written record to a structured history obtained from the patient by the research staff. We defined an error as either the failure to record the use of a medication the patient claimed to use or the recording of a medication that the patient denied using. We found that 83% of all patients had at least one such error, and 46% had three or more. We reanalyzed the data excluding over-the-counter, tropical, and cold medications, and found that 60% of all patients still had at least one error, and 18% had three or more. Failure to record use in the record was more common than recording medications the patient denied using. There were no qualitative differences between hospitals or between the histories obtained by interns and attending physicians. This analysis suggests that medication histories in the hospital medical record are not accurate sources of information in elderly persons. Errors in the history may adversely affect clinical care; researchers relying on hospital medical records to determine medication use at the time of admission should first validate their data.

Aged↗
PubMed1990

Antihypertensive medications and depression.

The association between antihypertensive medications and depression has been recognised for over 40 years. More recently, our understanding of the role of neurotransmitters in the aetiology of depression has helped us understand how antihypertensive drugs cause depression. Biogenic amine depletion is now believed to underlie the organic nature of depression, and many of the drugs used to treat hypertension interfere with this system. There is now compelling evidence that both reserpine and alpha-methyldopa can induce or worsen depression through their actions on the central nervous system. beta-Blockers have also been implicated, but the data supporting the link between these drugs and depression are not as certain. Guanethidine, clonidine, hydralazine, and prazosin appear to pose little risk in causing depression, although rare occurrences have been reported. Diuretics, calcium channel blockers, and angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors appear to have the lowest association with depression and are therefore the drugs of choice when depression is a risk. Physicians should know which drugs introduce the risk of causing or worsening depression. The wide array of medications now available to treat hypertension offers alternatives that pose low risk. All patients receiving medication to treat hypertension should be evaluated periodically for depression, and if depression occurs, medication should be suspected as playing a role in its aetiology.

Antihypertensive Agents↗
PubMed1989

Influence of hospitalization on drug therapy in the elderly.

In order to determine whether acute hospitalization leads to changes in the medications used by the elderly after discharge, we studied the medications used at admission and discharge for 197 elderly subjects admitted to one hospital. We found that 40% of all admission medications were discontinued by discharge and 45% of all discharge medications were newly started during the hospitalization. Although the number of drugs used did not increase significantly from admission to discharge (4.50 to 4.80, P = .128), the number of narcotics, laxatives, and antibiotics increased significantly. For those elderly subjects admitted to the hospital taking less than the average number of medications, the overall use of medication increased from admission to discharge (2.89 to 3.75, P less than .0001). These "low users" were discharged on more benzodiazepines, narcotics, laxatives, antibiotics, and cardiac medications. Our data suggest that during hospitalization admission medications are discontinued and new medications are started in large numbers and that these changes are accompanied by a tendency towards the increased use of certain categories of medications. These changes may place the elderly patient at increased risk of polypharmacy and its complications.

Aged↗
PubMed1989

Risk factors in geriatric drug prescribing. A practical guide to avoiding problems.

Although the use of medication has helped to cure and control disease, it has also led to serious iatrogenic illness. Toxicity is most common and severe in the elderly. Confusion, falls, depression, sedation, deterioration of function, and urinary incontinence and retention are frequently the manifestation of that toxicity. Normal ageing places older patients at risk because of changes in metabolism, distribution, and excretion of drugs, and sensitivity to drug effects is often greater in the elderly. Disease and the interactions of other drugs can increase the incidence and severity of side effects. Certain drugs should be avoided in the elderly. Those that are long acting and require hepatic metabolism, those with strong anticholinergic properties, and those that are highly sedating tend to cause the most problems. In every case, physicians must weigh the potential benefit of prescribing against the potential risk.

Aged↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A model for improving medication use in home health care patients.

OBJECTIVES: (1) To develop a model for the identification and resolution of problems associated with suboptimal medication use in elderly patients receiving home health care; (2) To select the most important identifiable problems and develop structured procedures for their resolution. DESIGN: Expert panel review, problem selection, and development of a problem resolution model and guidelines. SETTING: Home health care. PARTICIPANTS: A panel with expertise in home health nursing, pharmacy, clinical pharmacology, gerontology, pharmacoepidemiology, and health services research. INTERVENTIONS: A list of potential problems associated with the most frequently used classes of drugs was compiled for review by the panel. Problems that were controversial or that could not be identified in the home care setting were excluded. Panel members individually ranked the remainder. Detailed procedures for identification and resolution of the 15 top-ranking problems were developed. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Not applicable. RESULTS: Potential medication problems were defined by both drug use and symptoms or clinical signs associated with specific adverse effects, to ensure that clinically relevant problems would be identified. The model developed for problem assessment and resolution was centered on the drug utilization review (DUR) coordinator and the attending home health nurse. Following guidelines developed by the panel, the DUR coordinator advises the home health nurse about identified problems and how to resolve them. One of these practitioners, usually the nurse, then contacts the attending physician to explain their concerns, offer potential solutions, and request instructions. CONCLUSION: A potentially useful model for the identification and resolution of medication problems in the home health care setting was developed. This model is currently being evaluated in a randomized controlled trial.

Aged↗