“Report Sounds Alarm on Medication Overload Among Older Americans,” by Liz Seegert, Next Avenue

“Experts on aging are sounding the alarm about another U.S. drug crisis: Too many older adults taking too many medications. This trend is leading to a surge in adverse drug events (ADE) over the past two decades. The rate of emergency department visits by older adults for adverse drug events doubled between 2006 and 2014. That’s a problem as serious as the opioid crisis, but whose scope appears to remain virtually invisible to families, patients, policymakers and many clinicians, according to a recent report by the Lown Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Brookline, Mass.”

 

LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform):

I think there is a strong correlation between over-medication, falls, and long-term care (not just ER) admissions. This issue needs much more exposure.