Background: Polypharmacy is common in hospitalized older adults. Deprescribing interventions are not well described in the acute-care setting. The objective of this study was to describe a hospital-based, patient-centered deprescribing protocol (Shed-MEDS) and report pilot results.
Methods: This was a pilot study set in one academic medical center in the United States. Participants consisted of a convenience sample of 40 Medicare-eligible, hospitalized patients with at least five prescribed medications. A deprescribing protocol (Shed-MEDS) was implemented among 20 intervention and 20 usual care control patients during their hospital stay. The primary outcome was the total number of medications deprescribed from hospital enrollment. Deprescribed was defined as medication termination or dose reduction. Enrollment medications reflected all prehospital medications and active in-hospital medications. Baseline characteristics and outcomes were compared between the intervention and usual care groups using simple logistic or linear regression for categorical and continuous measures, respectively.
Results: There was no significant difference between groups in mean age, sex or Charlson comorbidity index. The intervention and control groups had a comparable number of medications at enrollment, 25.2 (±6.3) and 23.4 (±3.8), respectively. The number of prehospital medications in each group was 13.3 (±4.6) and 15.3 (±4.6), respectively. The Shed-MEDS protocol compared with usual care significantly increased the mean number of deprescribed medications at hospital discharge and reduced the total medication burden by 11.6 versus 9.1 (p = 0.032) medications. The deprescribing intervention was associated with a difference of 4.6 [95% confidence interval (CI) 2.5-6.7, p < 0.001] in deprescribed medications and a 0.5 point reduction (95% CI -0.01 to 1.1) in the drug burden index.
Conclusions: A hospital-based, patient-centered deprescribing intervention is feasible and may reduce the medication burden in older adults.
Keywords: deprescribing; geriatric syndromes; hospital; polypharmacy; postacute care.