Personal Injury Blog

Older Adults Who Receive Medical Care from Senior Home Care Agencies at Risk from Unsafe Medications

December 6th, 2011
senior home care agencies

Senior citizens who receive medical care from home care agencies may be taking unsafe medication that may have harmful health effects

A study finds that senior citizens who receive medical care from senior home care agencies are more likely to take a potentially unsafe medication that may have harmful health effects.  According to the study, approximately 40% of American senior citizens who seek medical care through a healthcare agency at home took at least one prescription drug that could have potentially harmful health effects for them.

That rate is approximately 3 times as high as that for seniors who get their medications from a medical office.  The researchers also found major differences in the number of prescription drugs prescribed for citizens who got healthcare from a home agency compared to those who got their prescriptions from a medical office.  Citizens who used a home health agency took an average of 11 medications.  This increased use of medications by these citizens probably increases their risk of suffering side effects and complications.  As any Los Angeles personal injury lawyer will tell you, the more number of medications a person is on, the higher the risk of side effects and complications like drug interactions.

The researchers analyzed data involving more than 3,100 seniors who took home healthcare.  The seniors were age 65 and above.  The data came from the 2007 National Home and Hospice Care Survey.  The researchers found that 38% of senior citizens who received home healthcare took at least one potentially unsafe medication.  Citizens who were on approximately 15 or more medications were at a much higher risk of suffering harmful health effects from unsafe medications.  These people’s risk of suffering harmful effects were about 5 or 6 times greater than for patients who were taking 7 or fewer medications.

The reason for this increased risk of unsafe medications is that persons who choose home healthcare are much more likely to receive care from a number of different physicians, and are prescribed a number of different drugs.  This increases the risk of suffering harmful complications from the medications.  Preventing medication errors is harder for home healthcare nurses when there is such a wide variety of medications from different sources to deal with.

According to the AGS Foundation for Health in Aging, senior citizens above the age of 65 buy more than 25% of all prescription medications, and approximately 30% of all nonprescription over-the-counter medications inside the United States.  Older people are much more likely to suffer from a vast range of illnesses, like diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, which require regular scheduled medications.  Often, senior citizens have more than one health concern, which means that they may be on more than one medication.  Additionally, senior citizens may be at a high-risk of the side effects of certain medications, because of age-related factors.

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