Polypharmacy, Multimorbidity and Evaluation of Services

Question 1

What is Polypharmacy?

Answer 1

When someone is taking over 5 medications

Question 2

What are the main issues associated with Polypharmacy?

Answer 2

1) Drug interactions
2) Pill Burden
3) Affect patient compliance and decrease patient satisfaction

Question 3

What are the 2 types of Polypharmacy?

Answer 3

1) Appropriate: Medicines optimised and best interests
2) Problematic: Intended benefit goes unrealised or not appropriate

Question 4

What is the best (Donabedian) method to evaluate healthcare services?

Answer 4

Structure –> Process –> Outcome

Question 5

What is meant by structure?

Answer 5

What there is e.g. Buildings, staff, equipment, beds

Question 6

What are Maxwell’s classification of 6 dimensions?

Answer 6

Acceptability
Accessibility
Appropriateness
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Equity

Question 7

What are the main difficulties to attribute a health outcome to a service provided?

Answer 7

1) Other factors can be involved
2) Time lag between Service and Outcome
3) Hard to establish link
4) Lack of data quality/available data
5) Requirement for large sample size

Question 8

How can data quality be evaluated? CART

Answer 8

Completeness
Accuracy
Relevance
Timeliness