To eliminate medication overload, serious cultural, educational, and policy changes are needed. This action plan offers recommendations for policymakers, health care institutions, clinicians, and patients across five key categories to reduce harm from multiple medication use.
Suggested Citation: Eliminating medication overload: A national action plan. Working Group on Medication Overload. Brookline, MA: The Lown Institute, 2020.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.46241/LI.YLBW4885
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Pharmaceutical marketing is a significant factor in the growing public health crisis of medication overload, which puts millions of older adults at risk of preventable harm and premature death. This issue brief provides recommendations to reduce pharmaceutical industry influence by limiting pharma sales rep visits to clinicians and direct-to-consumer advertising.
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This issue brief provides recommendations for clinical practice guidelines and electronic health records that would give clinicians the information they need to appropriately prescribe and deprescribe.
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This issue brief recommends training health professionals to reduce medication overload, by incorporating information on geriatric care and deprescribing training into professional schools and continuing education.
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To eliminate medication overload, we should implement “prescription checkups,” medication reviews that give patients and clinicians opportunities to deprescribe (discontinue medications or reduce doses) appropriately.
This issue brief provides detail on the policy, research, and technological changes needed to successfully implement prescription checkups.
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This issue brief provides recommendations for how to raise awareness among patients, clinicians, and the general public about the potential harms of multiple medication use.
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This analysis of California’s state budget from 2007 to 2018 finds that to ensure the long-term health of the state, California needs to eliminate health care waste and direct the savings toward increased funding for programs that improve community conditions—like public education, public health, housing assistance, food assistance, and income support.
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In this report, the Lown Institute calls for the development of a national strategy to address medication overload and help older people avoid its devastating effects on the quality and length of their lives. This is the full report (an executive summary is also available).
Suggested Citation: Garber, J., and Brownlee, S. Medication Overload: America's Other Drug Problem. Brookline, MA: The Lown Institute. 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.46241/LI.WOUK3548
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This is the executive summary of a report by the Lown Institute that calls for the development of a national strategy to address medication overload and help older people avoid its devastating effects on the quality and length of their lives.
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With the Right Care Series, published by The Lancet in 2017, the Lown Institute launched a global effort to assess the scope of overuse and underuse and place these twin failings at the center of health strategies everywhere to achieve the right care for all people. The Institute organized a team of 27 international experts from nine countries and 21 institutions.
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