America’s Seniors Are Overmedicated

A Wall Street Journal analysis of Medicare data found one in six seniors enrolled in Medicare’s drug benefit were prescribed eight or more medications at the same time

By Anna Wilde Mathews, Christopher Weaver, Tom McGinty and Josh Ulick of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"One in six of the 46 million seniors enrolled in Medicare’s drug benefit, which pays for most drugs taken by older Americans, were prescribed eight or more medications."

[there is] "a widely used list of medications that might be dangerous for seniors. The guidelines, maintained by the American Geriatrics Society and named the “Beers Criteria” after the doctor who first led their development, suggest some drugs should almost never be taken by older patients."

"Among the seniors in the Journal analysis who were taking eight or more drugs, 3.6 million had prescriptions for at least one medication that geriatricians say elderly patients should generally avoid."

"Among seniors prescribed 8+ drugs, 1.6 million got benzodiazepines, sedatives that appear on the Beers list.

In addition, 568,000 of those seniors were prescribed gabapentin or a similar drug. Gabapentin can have sedating effects.

More than 310,000 of the benzodiazepine patients also received muscle relaxants, another type of drug the Beers guidelines say seniors should avoid.

The Journal found 147,000 seniors took all three categories of drugs at once.

Mixing multiple medications that affect the central nervous system can magnify their side effects, leading to falls, say the Beers guidelines."

"The Journal analysis found that, among seniors taking eight or more drugs, it was common for the prescriptions to come from a large number of doctors.Some doctors prescribe medications to their patients at alarming rates, at times single-handedly ordering eight or more drugs for a single patient."

"process known as medication therapy management, is supposed to be a requirement under Medicare. The insurers that sell drug coverage must provide the service."

"The federal mandate applies to only a limited subset of enrollees"

"comprehensive medication reviews mandated by Medicare didn’t affect the average number of drugs prescribed to patients."