Home medicine reviews for patients on heart medications significantly reduced their chance of ending up in hospital, new Australian research has concluded.
The study, published in the latest edition of the journal Circulation, looked at Department of Veteran Affairs records of people aged 65 years or older who were taking beta-blockers bisoprolol, carvedilol or metoprolol succinate and analysed the impact of home medicine reviews (HMRs) performed collaboratively between pharmacists and doctors.
Led by Associate Professor Elizabeth Roughead, from the School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences at the University of South Australia, researchers found that those patients who received an HMR had a 45 per cent lower chance of being hospitalised for heart failure.
Of the 273 patients who received an HMR, 5.5 per cent ended up in hospital within a year, compared to 12 per cent of 5,444 patients who did not.
"The crux of it is that HMRs seem to be effective in keeping people out of hospitals," Prof Roughead told Pharmacy News.
"Australia has a big program in HMRs – something like 50,000 a year are done. So the real question was: could we see that it was making a difference? And it does for that time frame and population."
The demographic analysis found that despite the popularity of the program, only five per cent of veterans with heart failure received an HMR.
The researchers suggested that those who did receive an HMR were suffering from a more severe form of the disease because they had more drugs prescribed and had been previously hospitalised more frequently.
"What the study suggests is that the [HMR] service nationally is underutilised," Prof Roughead said.
"Lots of people that could benefit from this service don't get the opportunity and one of the nice things about this research is that we can directly show that there is a benefit and there is a benefit in the way it is practiced right now and it should probably provide more motivation to get more people to participate in the service."