BMJ  2005;330 (5 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7486.0-d

Home based medication reviews fail to improve outcomes

Home based medication reviews by pharmacists, targeted at elderly people who had had emergency admission to hospital and after discharge took at least two drugs daily, did not reduce deaths or improve patients' quality of life. Holland and colleagues (p 293) randomised 872 patients aged over 80 to two educational home visits by a pharmacist within two weeks and eight weeks of discharge or to usual practice. They found that the interventionnot only failed to reduce deaths or improve quality of life but was associated with a significantly higher rate of hospital admissions.

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Relevant Article

Does home based medication review keep older people out of hospital? The HOMER randomised controlled trial

Richard Holland, Elizabeth Lenaghan, Ian Harvey, Richard Smith, Lee Shepstone, Alistair Lipp, Maria Christou, David Evans, and Christopher Hand
BMJ 2005 330: 293. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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