Jonathan Wilhoite Blog: Harmful Medications Prescribed To Canadians Increases Risk of Danger

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Harmful Medications Prescribed To Canadians Increases Risk of Danger

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A study group from the University of Columbia claims that more than one in three Canadian senior citizens are given a prescription medicine that could be risky for older patients.

Harmful Medications Prescribed To Canadians Do More Harm Than Good

Many of these medications, according to study author Steve Morgan who is also a professor of health policy, are no longer effective for people beyond 65 years old due to changes in metabolism.

Among these medicines are benzodiazepines which are sedative hypnotics and used to treat insomnia and anxiety disorders. These are also costing the aging public no less than $ 400 million every year or an equivalent of $75 dollar for every Canadian aged 65 and up.

The findings were published recently in CMAJ Open and highlighted the effects of these ill-prescribed medicines for the health of geriatrics.

“We can do a better job. We can actually get better health outcomes for less money if we invest in the policies and practices to encourage appropriate prescribing,” says Morgan.

The analysis was based from data and prescription claims for those 65 and older in all Canadian provinces for 2013 with the exception of Quebec.

Their analysis led to findings that 37 percent of older Canadians were also filled one or more prescriptions that have been listed as potentially inappropriate by the Beers Criteria– a standard followed by the American Geriatric’s Society.

The study also found that a high proportion of this population is women at 42 percent and men at 31 percent. Estrogens accounted for most of the prescribed drugs.

“Canada has had some really excellent examples of initiatives that actually do work,” says Morgan. “We haven’t had the sizeable and sustained investments that are necessary to change culture because prescribing appropriateness is much about culture and expectations as it is about the evidence and science of a particular product.”

Morgan and his team believes that a national strategy should integrate programs to monitor an evaluate patterns of prescriptions and health outcomes, as these are crucial in determining what types of medicines the older population actually needs.

The team is believes that with this system getting back into the right track, harmful medications prescribed to Canadians will no longer become a health concern.

Image Credit: Harmful medication prescribing to Canadian seniors costs $419M a year – CBC

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