1b. What are your comments on the following identified priority: Polypharmacy reviews?

Recommendation: Introduce polypharmacy reviews that are not exclusive to care home settings (option 95).

As people age, they become more vulnerable to having multiple health or medical conditions.  They can often be complex in nature or classified as chronic conditions.  To treat these conditions, older people are often given a number of different medications.  This is known as polypharmacy, “many medications”

Polypharmacy reviews are undertaken to ensure that patients taking multiple medications are doing so for the right reasons, to ensure safety and effectiveness.  They are a proactive intervention measure with the aim of preventing harm from medicines, hospital admissions, and mortality from complex medicines regimes.

Currently the East Lothian Pharmacotherapy team undertake polypharmacy reviews for care home residents in collaboration with the Care Home Team and General Practitioners. General Practitioners can also undertake polypharmacy reviews but are limited by capacity.

This priority indicates an opportunity for a more coordinated approach to polypharmacy reviews undertaken in East Lothian.  An ‘invest to save’ approach could see an increase in polypharmacy reviews aiming to reduce potential harm from medicines in older patients, improving quality of life, reducing medicines burden for patients, reducing avoidable hospital admissions, and ensuring medicines are used cost effectively across East Lothian.

[Taken from POPS Engagement and Consultation Document]