What is Medication Management?
Medication management is designed to make sure patients and caregivers are working together to make sure the correct medication and accurate dosages are given to patients. Addressing this medication reconciliation will help prevent the person from overdosing, underdosing, or missing medications to name a few.
Risk of not having proper Medication Management
As the population gets older, there is a probability that a person may have multiple medications that need to be taken for health reasons. One thing to keep in mind is taking 5 or more medications can become a serious health risk. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 350,000 people go to the emergency room each year that are issues related to their medications.
According to a study in JAMA Internal Medicine, about 80% of older adults regularly take at least two prescription medications and 36% regularly take at least five prescription drugs. These multiple prescriptions could lead to medication issues.
Proper medication management can help prevent these mishaps, before it becomes a problem. In addition, when people are taking multiples medications, there is a potential to mix up the medications that become dangerous, and potentially, fatal for the person.
Some of the health issues that are tied to older adults and are related to medication mismanagement are drug interactions, health conditions, falls/fractures and discontinuation of treatments.
Also, there is the issue of older adults that either forget to take their medication, are non-complaint and choose not to take their medications, or do not have the financial means to pay for the medication.
Improving Medication Management
The term for taking too many medications is known as polypharmacy and is only getting worse as our U.S. population continues to live longer.
With that said, there are steps the caregiver can take to make sure the medication is being properly dispensed to the person and provide proper medication management.
Things to do when managing medication management as a caregiver:
- Monitor and log the medications of person you are caring for and review it with their physician.
- Check the medication labels and talk to you person you are caring for about the medications.
- Verify with their physician about any possible drug interactions.
- Determine and monitor for any possible side effects.
- Verify if the dosage is correct for the age.
- Research to make sure the medications they are taking are safe.
- Make sure your loved one is aware of the dangers of self-prescribing.
- Constantly make sure the loved one is maintaining their medication compliance.
- If possible, try to utilize only one physician for their primary care and a single pharmacy location to get their medications.
- Assist with making sure the person you are caring for has their medications organized correctly.
In order to make sure proper medication management it being administered, a healthcare professional should be consulted. To learn more about medication management, you can reference resources such as the National Institute on Aging at https://www.nia.nih.gov/.
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