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Prescription of Addictive and Non-Addictive Drugs to Home-Dwelling Elderly

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Abstract

Background

Complex medical conditions are frequent among seniors, and their medical treatment represents a challenge. Older patients have a high rate of consumption of prescription drugs, greater risks of medication interactions, and a higher likelihood of side effects. Many common drugs used by the elderly also have addictive potential. Prescription patterns involving general practitioners (GPs) are not sufficiently known.

Objective

Our objective was to examine the regular GP role in the prescription of addictive and non-addictive drugs to home-dwelling older people in Norway.

Design

The study was designed as a panel data study.

Setting

Data on all prescription drugs dispensed at pharmacies to patients 70 years and older from the Norwegian Prescription Database were merged with data on GPs and GPs’ patient lists from the Regular General Practitioner Database. The dataset included 624,308 patients and 4,520 GPs in the period from 2004 to 2007.

Outcome measures

Outcome measures included quantities of addictive and non-addictive drugs prescribed and dispensed per patient by the regular GP, other GPs, non-GP specialists, and hospital doctors; the number of prescribers per patient; and time trend over the observation period.

Results

On average, 319 defined daily doses of medication were prescribed per quarter to an older patient, 6 % of which were classified as possibly addictive medications. Of all drugs, 72 % were prescribed by the patients’ regular GP, 77 % of addictives and 71 % of non-addictives. Drug quantities prescribed increased with multiple prescribers and did so to a greater extent for addictives than for non-addictives. Time trends show an increasing number of prescribers and increasing drug quantities over the observation period.

Conclusion

The regular GP prescribes the major portion of non-addictive and, especially, addictive medications to older patients and thus holds a key role in the coordination of prescriptions to this group. Focusing on the role of the GP is important in view of the increasing time trends.

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Notes

  1. Since this is a meta-study using non-personally identifiable data, the approvals are sufficient according to Norwegian regulations.

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Acknowledgments

The financial support of the Norwegian Research Council is gratefully acknowledged. The South-East Norway Regional health authority is gratefully acknowledged for support to CL. Thanks to the Norwegian Prescription Database (NorPD), Norwegian Social Science Data (NSD), The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV), and Statistics Norway (SSB) for providing data, thus making the analysis possible. These sources are not responsible for data analysis or interpretations. The classification of drugs was performed with the help of pharmacist Vigdis Solberg at the hospital pharmacy enterprise: ‘Sykehusapotekene HF’.

The authors affirm that there are no conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Health Services Research Centre (HØKH), Akershus University Hospital, PO Box 95, 1478, Lørenskog, Norway

    Inger Cathrine Kann, Christofer Lundqvist & Hilde Lurås

  2. Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, Campus Ahus, Oslo, Norway

    Christofer Lundqvist & Hilde Lurås

  3. Department of Neurology, Akershus University Hospital, Lørenskog, Norway

    Christofer Lundqvist

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  1. Inger Cathrine Kann
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  2. Christofer Lundqvist
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Correspondence to Christofer Lundqvist.

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Kann, I.C., Lundqvist, C. & Lurås, H. Prescription of Addictive and Non-Addictive Drugs to Home-Dwelling Elderly. Drugs Aging 31, 453–459 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40266-014-0169-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40266-014-0169-1

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