Polypharmacy

Polypharmacy simply means many medicines.  As we are living longer with more chronic and long-term diseases, it is becoming increasingly common for people to be prescribed many medicines – sometimes ten or more different types of medicines each day. 

This project will enable good quality reviews of patients on many medicines to take place; it will provide tools to help identify patients who are at risk because of their many medicines and guide clinicians to manage this. 

Polypharmacy is a growing issue that is especially a problem for people over 75.  As people age their body does not break down medicines in the same was as it did when they were younger.  Because of this older people are at risk of medicines related complications that can lead to new illness, accidents such as falls, and increased risk of admission to hospital. 

‘Deprescribing’ is when medicines are stopped in a carefully controlled way, following a review of how the patient is managing their different illnesses and medicines. 

We have been working with a small group of people, locally and nationally to develop a set of comparators to help CCG's and practices identify people who are potentially at risk from polypharmacy. The polypharmacy comparators were launched in a local workshop on 30th March 2017. For slide content and event videos please click here.