Prevalence and patient-rated relevance of complexity factors in medication regimens of community-dwelling patients with polypharmacy

Purpose To describe the prevalence of complexity factors in the medication regimens of community-dwelling patients with more than five drugs and to evaluate the relevance of these factors for individual patients. Methods Data were derived from the HIOPP-6 trial, a controlled study conducted in 9 general practices which evaluated an electronic tool to detect and reduce complexity of drug treatment. The prevalence of complexity factors was based on the results of the automated analysis of 139 patients' medication data. The relevance assessment was based on the patients' rating of each factor in an interview (48 patients included for analysis). Results A median of 5 (range 0-21) complexity factors per medication regimen were detected and at least one factor was observed in 131 of 139 patients. Almost half of these patients found no complexity factor in their medication regimen relevant. Conclusion In most medication regimens, complexity factors could be identified automatically, yet less than 15% of factors were indeed relevant for patients as judged by themselves. When assessing complexity of medication regimens, one should especially consider factors that are both particularly frequent and often challenging for patients, such as use of inhalers or tablet splitting.

Automated summary

This study described the prevalence of complexity factors in the medication regimens of community-dwelling patients with more than five drugs and evaluated their relevance for individual patients. The results showed that while complexity factors could be automatically identified, only a small percentage of them were considered relevant by patients themselves.