Preventing Medication Errors: Evidence-Based Medication Management Intervention

Grant Summary

The John A. Hartford Foundation has awarded a grant to the Partners in Care Foundation to test and demonstrate the feasibility of an evidence-based medications management program targeting frail and poor older adults who live in their own homes and receive services from Medicaid waiver care managers. Poor, elderly patients face a high risk of dangerous medications errors, which are usually simple to identify and correct. This project builds on the work of a prior $1.2 million grant and subsequent dissemination of a medications review model for home patients with private insurance coverage. The Partners in Care Foundation will use funding to conduct a formal study in eight home care agencies in three states using Medicaid waiver care managers to conduct in-home medications reviews with elderly patients. Utilizing a newly developed software program and data that will be reviewed by a consulting pharmacist, the review will target high-risk problems such as drug duplication, cardiovascular medication problems, and inappropriate use of mood altering drugs. In the final year of the grant, up to 15 home care agencies will participate in an online workshop to deliver the materials and technical assistance needed to disseminate the program widely. Adults aged 70 and older take more medications than any other group but the likelihood of medication-related problems increases as the medicines potentially interact with each other or as an aging body metabolizes drugs more slowly than expected. For patients choosing to receive care in their own home, there is no coordinated system for reviewing drug regimens. A recent report found that nearly one-fifth of the 32 million older Americans living at home used potentially inappropriate prescription drugs and nearly 1 million older adults used medications that should always be avoided because of their side effects, costing an estimated $85 billion annually in extra medical care while worsening or creating health problems. The Partners in Care Foundation is a non-profit, charitable organization that increases access to home-health care for at-risk populations. Since 2001, Hartford Funding has enabled Partners in Care to disseminate medical management practices to ultimately decrease dangerous medication errors among older patients.