Improving Medication Prescribing-Related Outcomes for Vulnerable Elderly in Transitions (IMPROVE-IT)

St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton

Status: Completed

Conditions: Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions; Health Care Costs; Aged; Patient Discharge

Treatments: Other: Medication Coordinated care

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04077281

CIHR#419518

Details and patient eligibility

About

Medication safety is a crucial health issue for every older Canadian since many of the medications causing serious harm are those which also have life-saving or important symptom-relieving benefits. Very few specialists can accurately advise seniors which medications provide more benefit than harm for them personally, and make changes safely as this requires a very large breadth and depth of knowledge about the patient, the conditions they have and their therapies. Now that telemedicine is compatible with smart phones, this extends the ability of scarce specialists to 'see' any patient in Canada in a way that is more convenient for the patient and may be less expensive than current care. This project will find out whether a unique Clinical Pharmacology specialist team in Hamilton, Ontario can improve medication safety (stop medications no longer needed, reduce doses where appropriate, change to safer medications) for a high risk group of older hospitalized Canadians taking many medications. The hospital where this pilot study will take place was the first to install the world's leading electronic health record and set it up to facilitate and support high quality research. Patients who volunteer will be assigned to their usual care, or to the intervention which is the Clinical Pharmacology specialist team approach starting in hospital and following up with the patient at home using telemedicine and detailed communication with them, their caregiver, family physician, community pharmacist and other specialists. The investigators will study whether the intervention is effective and cost-effective at reducing harmful medication burden, reducing the need to return to hospital, or improving the patient's ratings of their care coordination. The results will determine whether a subsequent large trial is worthwhile.

Enrollment: 60 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 65+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Adults over the age of 65 years.
• Admitted to Medicine or Surgery services for more than 2 days.
• High cost users (defined as):
• Have at least one other hospitalization within the previous year.
• Taking 5 or more chronic medications including at least one TRIIM-Med.
• Provide informed consent.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients with "do not approach status".
• Patient or Caregiver not fluent in English.
• Patients who do not provide informed consent.
• Patients admitted for < 2 days.
• Patients < 65 years of age.
• Not a high cost user (as defined above).

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Triple Blind

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60 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention Arm

Experimental group

Description:

Clinical Pharmacology specialist team approach starting in hospital and following up with the patient at home using telemedicine and detailed communication with them, their caregiver, family physician, community pharmacist and other specialists.

Treatment:

Other: Medication Coordinated care

Control Arm (Usual care)

No Intervention group

Description:

Patients will receive a best possible medication history (BPMH) as do the intervention patients, then usual care by their primary team.