Browsing by Subject "medications"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Development of a Risk Assessment Tool for Falls Prevention in Hospital Inpatients Based on the Medication Appropriateness Index (MAI) and Modified Beer’s Criteria
    (University of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy, 2012) Rumore, Martha M.; Vaidean, Georgeta
    Medication review is an essential component of comprehensive falls assessment. A medication review by pharmacists can assist to identify and notify prescribers of medications that require adjustment or discontinuation. Beers Criteria and the Medication Assessment Index (MAI) are explicit and implicit inappropriate prescribing (IP) tools, respectively. While the Beers Criteria has been applied to falls prevention, the MAI has not. Developing alternative falls prevention tools has been spurned by both the desire to overcome limitations of the Beers Criteria, coupled with the need for implicit criteria which includes consideration for patient –specific clinical judgement. A literature search and review of the Beers Criteria and MAI tools revealed advantages and disadvantages of each. Using combined explicit/implicit falls assessment criteria using both the Beers Criteria and MAI as a framework, a falls specific inappropriate prescribing (FASPIP) tool for use in elderly hospitalized patients was developed. Validation of the FASPIP in the clinical setting is needed.
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    International Variations In Essential Medication Lists
    (University of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy, 2014) Tejani, Ali H.; Wertheimer, Albert
    Every nation in the world has established a National Medication Formulary to account for all the medications present in the country. Many countries follow the Essential Medication List provided by the World Health organization (WHO) when making their own National Medication Formulary. Our study looked at variations in the National Formularies when compared to the Essential Medication Lists. Different relationships such as missing and extra medications lists were formulated and the statistics analyzed. It was noted that on average most of the countries studied were lacking 47% of medications, and had 30% additional medications on their national formulary. Further studies need to be conducted as Essential Medications may be lacking, or harmful medications may be present in a country’s formulary leading to severe health problems.
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    Medication utilization for rheumatoid arthritis among commercially insured patients
    (2021-01) Reidt, Shannon
    Background: Tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi) and non tumor necrosis factor (TNF) biologics are specialty drugs recommended by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) guideline for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Barriers to their use include cost, side effects, and route of administration. Objective: The primary objective of this study was to evaluate how RA medication utilization among a commercially insured population compares to treatment recommendations from the ACR guideline for the treatment of RA. Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study used data from commercially insured patients from the Optum Data Warehouse. Patients were included if they had continuous medical and pharmacy coverage from January through December 2017 and at least one medical claim with a diagnosis code for RA. Pharmacy claims were included if the medication on the claim could be used for the treatment of RA. The proportion of the population using selected ACR regimens was calculated. Total cost of RA-related care was compared among users and non-users of specialty drugs. Results: A total of 7219 patients were included in the study. The proportion of specialty drug users and non-users was 32.0% and 60.1%, respectively, while 7.5% of patients did not have any RA-related drug claims. ACR recommended regimens targeted at early RA or established RA patients with low disease activity were used by 26.2% of patients. For early or established RA with moderate or high disease activity, methotrexate and TNFi combination therapy was the most common (10.8%) ACR regimen used while a disease modifying antirheumatic drug (other than methotrexate) and TNFi combination therapy was used by 7.5% of patients. Total cost of RA care was $37,530 ($23,647 to $49,541) for specialty drug users and $982 ($326 to $2114) for non-users of specialty drugs ($36,548; 95% CI: $34,158 to $35,911). Conclusions: Medication utilization adhered to ACR recommendations in this commercially insured population.