Analysis of Costs of Polypharmacy in the Elderly

Abstract

Objective: to determine the costs of polypharmacy in the elderly who attend a Primary Care level Unit. Methods: cross-sectional prospective study, that was carried out in the Family Medicine Unit (umf) no. 1 in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mexico. It was included five or more drug prescriptions issued to elderly; the clinical-diagnose and therapeutic congruence was revised in the electronic record, and finally, costs and rational prescription were estimated. Frequencies, proportions, measures of central tendency, dispersion, and anova were used for the analysis. Results: 243 patients, 30% men and 70% women were included with an average age of 72 years. The average of prescribed medicines per patient was 8.1 ±1.8. With a clinical-diagnose therapeutic congruence in 22.2% of the cases, in which there were significant expenses, regarding cost- expense and investment in drugs of the basic level prescriptions of the unit (p<0.05). Conclusions: according to the obtained results, expenses exceed costs, that is, not justified drugs are prescribed to the elderly, which increases the risk of opposite events.