Polypharmacy: What’s your Risk?

The World Health Organization (WHO) defined polypharmacy as “the administration of many drugs at the same time or the administration of an excessive number of drugs.” This means that a person is taking a multiple number of drugs, which not all may be necessary. Polypharmacy is not to get confused with polymedicine. Polymedicine is using many medications to treat a variety of health problems, but polypharmacy includes having a duplicate of medications with high dosage and while having it prescribed for a long period of time. 

Polypharmacy can happen at any age, but it is typically more of a problem in the elderly populations. Seniors tend to have multiple medical conditions that require medication. An article stated that patients are sometimes seen by multiple providers because they may have multiple medical conditions that require a specialist. Patients may only report their medications depending on the specialist they are seeing. This means that they may not be reporting other medications they got prescribed by another specialist. People may also go to different pharmacies depending on distance, cost, and convenience, which may lead to having incomplete medication histories and cause more medications to be prescribed. All in all, the variety of medications can lead to negative drug reactions. Examples of such are loss of appetite, constipation, hallucinations, and dizziness. Not only can a person’s health be affected, but also their medical costs. It has been found that there was approximately an increase of 30% in medical costs for those potentially taking medication they did not need.

A factor that contributes to the problem of polypharmacy, is that some patients want to receive their medication at their doctor visits, or they expect to be prescribed every time they go to the doctor to feel like their illness is being acknowledged. The main goal is not to try and find a certain amount of medication and stay below it, but to find the right medication for each individual person.

Polypharmacy can be extremely dangerous, and people need to be aware that it can happen to anyone. Everyone needs to know of this problem to be aware of their own medications and how these things happen to avoid them or take precautions. 

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By: Jeovanna Amador Ayala

Senior Care Advising Intern at WellPath Partners

B.S. Kinesiology Applied Fitness at California State University Northridge

MPH Candidate at California State University Long Beach