A Pharmacist’s Daily Review May Have Cut Medication Problems and Hospitalizations in Older Adults
For older adults living with several chronic diseases, taking medicine is often less a simple routine than a continuously shifting medical puzzle. A single person may be prescribed drugs for high blood pressure, diabetes, abnormal cholesterol, pain, sleep problems and heart disease, with each medication carrying its own instructions, side effects and potential interactions. A retrospective cohort study published in BMC Geriatrics suggests that bringing pharmacists directly into this long-term care process may substantially improve both medication safety and several clinical outcomes. Among residents of an integrated medical-nursing care institution, those who received structured pharmacist-led pharmaceutical care had fewer drug-related problems, fewer potentially inappropriate medications and better adherence than comparable residents receiving usual care. They also reached blood pressure and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol targets more often and were hospitalized less frequently. The findings offer a striking illustration of how medication management—not only diagnosis and prescribing—can influence the health of aging populations.
The study, led by Yilin Xie and Zhenxing Wang, examined patient data collected between October 2022 and October 2024. The researchers compared 99 older adults who received structured pharmaceutical care with 99 patients who received usual care. Because the study was not randomized, the investigators used propensity-score matching to create groups with more comparable baseline characteristics. Propensity scores are statistical estimates of how likely a person is to receive an intervention based on observed factors such as age, medical history or treatment patterns. Matching patients on those scores can reduce—but cannot eliminate—the influence of differences between groups. The approach is particularly useful in retrospective research, where investigators analyze records of care that has already occurred. It cannot provide the same certainty as a randomized clinical trial, but it can reveal clinically important associations in real-world settings where older patients often take multiple medications under the supervision of several health-care professionals.
The intervention was more comprehensive than simply asking patients whether they had taken their pills. Structured pharmaceutical care typically involves reviewing the full medication list, checking whether each drug is appropriate and effective, identifying duplications or interactions, considering dose adjustments and monitoring whether patients can follow the regimen. Pharmacists may also communicate recommendations to physicians and nurses and educate patients about timing, missed doses and adverse effects. This is especially important in older adults because aging can alter the way the body absorbs, distributes, metabolizes and eliminates medicines. Declining kidney function, for example, can slow the clearance of certain drugs, allowing them to accumulate to potentially dangerous concentrations. Changes in body composition can alter the distribution of fat-soluble or water-soluble medications, while cognitive impairment, poor vision or complex dosing schedules can make adherence difficult even when treatment is medically appropriate.
The clearest difference appeared in drug-related problems, or DRPs. These include a broad range of events in which medication use interferes with achieving the desired health outcome, such as an unnecessary drug, an untreated condition, an ineffective treatment, an incorrect dose, an adverse reaction or failure to take medicine as intended. DRPs were identified in 39.4 percent of patients receiving pharmacist-led care, compared with 73.7 percent of those receiving usual care, a difference reported as statistically significant at p less than 0.001. In practical terms, the result suggests that systematic medication review may uncover risks that routine clinical encounters miss. The study also found potentially inappropriate medications in 36.4 percent of the intervention group, compared with 57.6 percent of controls. Such medicines may have an unfavorable balance of benefit and risk in older adults, particularly when safer alternatives exist or when a drug is used at an unsuitable dose or for too long.
The researchers also reported a major improvement in medication adherence, with the intervention group scoring significantly better than the usual-care group at p less than 0.001. Adherence is not merely a matter of patient behavior. It is shaped by the number of medicines prescribed, the frequency of dosing, side effects, treatment costs, physical difficulty swallowing tablets, memory problems and whether instructions are understandable. A pharmacist can help simplify a regimen, identify medicines that are causing symptoms and distinguish intentional treatment changes from accidental omissions in a medication list. In an integrated medical-nursing institution, pharmacists may also have more opportunities to observe how medicines are administered and how residents respond over time. That continuity creates a feedback loop: problems are identified, recommendations are made, treatment is adjusted and the patient is monitored to see whether the change worked.
Better medication management was associated with improvements in measurable cardiovascular risk factors. Blood pressure target attainment reached 82.6 percent in the pharmacist-care group, compared with 65.9 percent among controls, with p equal to 0.013. The intervention was also linked to greater blood pressure stability, primarily because of lower variability in systolic blood pressure. Systolic pressure is the higher number in a blood-pressure reading, representing arterial pressure when the heart contracts. Its variability can be influenced by inconsistent dosing, drug interactions, dehydration, pain, autonomic changes and measurement conditions. Reducing swings may matter because highly unstable blood pressure has been associated with vascular and cardiovascular risk, although this study does not establish that the pharmacist intervention itself caused the improvement. The findings are consistent with the idea that checking dose timing, identifying missed treatment and recognizing medicines that raise or lower pressure unexpectedly can produce a steadier therapeutic effect.
Cholesterol control also improved. Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or LDL-C, is often described as “bad” cholesterol because excess circulating LDL particles can contribute to the formation of atherosclerotic plaques inside arteries. The proportion of patients reaching their LDL-C target was 55.6 percent in the intervention group, compared with 39.4 percent in the control group, a difference reported at p equal to 0.023. Pharmacist involvement may help by detecting treatment interruptions, clarifying whether a statin or other lipid-lowering drug is being taken as prescribed and checking whether adverse effects are discouraging continued use. The study additionally found fewer hypoglycemic events among patients receiving pharmacist-led care. Hypoglycemia—an abnormally low blood-glucose level—can cause sweating, confusion, weakness, seizures or loss of consciousness. Older adults may be particularly vulnerable because kidney impairment, irregular eating and multiple glucose-lowering drugs can make blood sugar fall unexpectedly. Preventing these episodes requires balancing the benefits of tight glucose control against the immediate dangers of over-treatment.
One of the most consequential findings concerned hospitalization. During the study period, 35.4 percent of patients receiving structured pharmaceutical care were hospitalized, compared with 49.5 percent of those receiving usual care; the reported p value was 0.045. Hospital admission is a broad outcome influenced by infections, falls, cardiovascular events, medication toxicity and worsening chronic disease, so the result cannot identify exactly which mechanism accounted for the difference. Still, medication-related harm is a plausible contributor. An inappropriate dose can trigger kidney injury or bleeding; an untreated condition can deteriorate until emergency care is required; and low blood sugar or excessive blood pressure reduction can lead to falls. By resolving these problems before they escalate, medication review could potentially reduce some preventable admissions. Yet the borderline statistical significance and the study’s modest size mean the hospitalization result should be interpreted cautiously and confirmed in larger populations.
The investigators emphasize that the research was conducted in an integrated medical-nursing care institution, a setting in which pharmacists can work alongside clinicians and nursing staff rather than operating as a separate dispensing service. That organizational context may be central to the apparent benefits. Nurses often observe day-to-day symptoms and administration difficulties, physicians make diagnostic and prescribing decisions, and pharmacists provide detailed expertise in medication selection, dosing and interactions. Coordinating those perspectives can be especially valuable for residents with multimorbidity, whose treatments may be individually reasonable but collectively burdensome or hazardous. The authors report that the study was approved by the relevant ethics committee, used anonymized retrospective data and waived informed consent because of its design. They also declared no competing interests. The work was supported by several Chinese medical and health-research funding programs.
The results do not prove that every older adult needs an intensive pharmacist intervention, nor do they show that pharmacists alone produced the observed differences. Retrospective studies can be affected by residual confounding—unmeasured differences between groups that statistical matching cannot correct. Patients receiving structured care may have had better access to staff, stronger institutional support or other characteristics that also improved outcomes. The study was performed in a single integrated-care environment, and its findings may not automatically apply to hospitals, nursing homes or community clinics with different staffing models. Even so, the scale of the differences in medication-related problems and inappropriate prescribing makes the signal difficult to ignore. As populations age and polypharmacy becomes increasingly common, the study points toward a practical shift in health care: medication safety may improve when pharmacists are treated as active members of the clinical team, with time and authority to follow treatment from prescription to daily use and, ultimately, to the outcomes that matter most to patients.
