By Merin C. MacDonald | Date published: November 19, 2024
Jerry Gurwitz Discusses Challenges of Reducing High-Risk Medication Use in Patients with Dementia
In a recent article in UMass Chan News, Jerry H. Gurwitz, MD, the Dr. John Meyers Professor of Primary Care Medicine, and professor of medicine in the Divisions of Geriatric Medicine and Health Systems Science, discussed the D-PRESCRIBE-AD study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Funded by the National Institute on Aging, the trial enrolled nearly 13,000 people and investigated whether educational mailings to patients, caregivers, and health care providers had an impact on reducing prescribing of high-risk medications to people with dementia.
“People with dementia are at risk both of polypharmacy and adverse effects of certain drugs, more so than other groups of older people,” said Dr. Gurwitz, who served as principal investigator. “So, continual reassessment of their need is really, really important, and that was the driving force behind our study.”
Ultimately, investigators found that the mailings had no impact on reducing high-risk medication usage in this population. However, Dr. Gurwitz emphasized that negative results still hold important lessons.
“The bigger implications of our study relate to how health plans communicate with their members,” he said. “Health plans go through the motions, and they never know if what they’re sending out had any kind of impact, even for important things like use of a medication that may be unsafe.”
Sonal Singh, MD, MPH, associate professor of family medicine & community health and faculty in the Division of Health Systems Science was first author on the study.
Read more about the D-PRESCRIBE-AD study on UMass Chan News.
Listen to Dr. Gurwitz speak about the study on the JAMA Internal Medicine JN Learning Podcast.