מתוך medicontext.co.il
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Unused pills may account for more than $1 billion in drug costs among elderly Americans each year, new research suggests.
Wasted medications cost each of 73 elderly study participants about $30 per year, on average. Extrapolated to the older US population as a whole that suggests the price tag for discarded or unused pills tops $1 billion annually, according to a report in a recent issue of the Journal of Family Practice.
Although it is unclear whether the small study can be generalized, researchers say that it sends a message to doctors to "take note of what happens to prescribed medicines."
Dr. Thomas M. Morgan of the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and associates interviewed 73 retirement-community residents aged 65 and older. They also visited the participants' homes to take prescription-pill counts. All had full prescription-drug coverage.
The investigators found that wasted pills accounted for a little more than 2% of the residents' total yearly medication costs. And although the average individual cost of $30.47 was "modest," Morgan notes, this per-person price tag adds up.
Antibiotics, high blood pressure medication and benzodiazepines–a drug class that includes treatments for anxiety and insomnia–were the most frequently wasted drugs. Drugs for acute conditions, rather than chronic illnesses, appeared to account for most of the unused medication, according to Morgan.
Respondents most often failed to finish their medication because they were feeling better or because they thought the treatment was ineffective. A doctor's change in the prescription and drug side effects were other common reasons.
To help shore up waste, Morgan suggests that doctors try to determine whether a particular drug is right for a patient before ordering a full prescription. "Judicious use of samples is a possible remedy for this problem," he writes.
Morgan also calls on doctors to stress the importance of taking all of the pills in an antibiotic prescription–which, besides reducing waste, is crucial to wiping out disease-causing bacteria in the body and reducing the spread of drug-resistant bacteria.
"Physicians should begin to take note of what happens to prescribed medicines," Morgan concludes. "That may serve as the most immediate basis for waste reduction."
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