Mash His Cute Little Nose
We're Looking For a Little Yellow
Donate, monthly if possible
Posted on 08/08/2011 11:54:13 AM PDT by tellw
Seniors in Canada are overdrugged and overtested, to the detriment of both their health and the health care system, as billions of dollars are being spent that could more productively be spent elsewhere, several experts say.
An array of factors is contributing to the overmedicalization of seniors, the experts add, including a simple desire of many patients for pharmaceutical solutions to prolong life or improve sexual performance; drugging seniors to make them manageable in health facilities; overuse of preventive medication; aggressive pharmaceutical industry marketing techniques; questionable clinical guidelines; and prescriptions to offset the effects of other prescriptions.
Pharmacists filled an average 74 prescriptions per year for people aged 80 or over in 2005, as compared to 14 prescriptions per year for all other age groups, according to the latest available Statistics Canada data. The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) says that in 2010, about 13% of seniors who took five or more prescription medications experienced a side effect that caused them to seek further health care services.
CIHI says that drug expenditures in Canada increased from $3.8 billion in 1985 to $31.1 billion in 2010 and that per capita drug spending among seniors is three times that of the rest of the population. There was a 214% increase in the prescription drug claims by Ontario seniors between 1997 and 2006, during which time there was an 18.5% increase in the number of people aged over 65 (BMC Family Practice 2010;11:75). CIHI data indicate that the number of seniors on public drug programs taking five or more drug classes increased from 57.7% to 62.0% from 2002 to 2008.
All of those numbers suggest that there are major challenges for the health care system, including costs, says Dr. Margaret McGregor, a family physician at the Mid-Main Community Health Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia. “Certainly, we are pushing up our life expectancy. The question is, in doing expensive things at the margins, what other opportunities are we missing out on?”
Canadian Institute for Health Information data indicate that per capita drug spending among seniors is three times that of the rest of the population.
Image courtesy of © 2011 Thinkstock Among the great culprits is unnecessary preventive medication, McGregor says. “We tend to keep elderly people on medications for prevention purposes, even when there’s no real research that supports doing so.”
Some drugs that are prescribed to the elderly can be harmful to their health, says Dr. Fernand Turcotte, a retired physician and cofounder of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine at the Université du Laval in Québec City, Quebec.
For example, Turcotte says, hypertensive drugs are counterintuitive for many elderly patients. After age 75 or 80, the arterial walls are less elastic and therefore a higher blood pressure is often necessary to pump blood to areas where it’s needed, he says. “By medicating to lower blood pressure, I run a high risk of creating circulatory insufficiency.”
Turcotte argues that many prescriptions for the elderly are entirely unnecessary. “When we look at long term health care facilities in Quebec, many people are still receiving statins? What the hell are we trying to prevent?”
Some physicians have argued that ageism in medicine leads to preventive prescriptions that cannot be correlated to either longevity or quality of life (BMJ 2010; 341: 181).
The prescribing pressures come not only from the internal medical community that strives for equal treatment for all, but also from the patients themselves. As Turcotte explains, families ask physicians to do whatever they can to reduce the pain of elderly loved ones. In addition, direct-to-consumer marketing is leading baby boomers on a quest for youth to ask for prescriptions for “lifestyle” drugs like Viagra or hormone replacement therapy, he argues.
Still others say that the pharmaceutical industry plays a role. “Doctors are influenced [by pharmaceutical marketing] usually without knowing it,” says Dr. Joel Lexchin, professor of health policy at York University in Toronto, Ontario. Lexchin adds that his studies link marketing with decreased quality in prescribing patterns and increased costs for patients, including seniors (PLoS Med 7(10): e1000352. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed .1000352).
And so it begins....
As PJ O’Rourke says, “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it’s free.”
The most surprising thing to me in this article is that ‘overmedicalization’ is, apparently, a real word.
It is very profitable to keep people alive longer than they should be with drugs. Prescriptions pay, testing pays, and it keeps people employed in the nursing homes.
I'd stand over his bed and say, "Hey, he's old but he's smart. He cruises [Free Republic] the internet, cares about politics and can get around pretty well."
They were so surprised when I'd get him up and make him walk down the hall. "Oh," they'd say. "He walks?"
To my great grief, another family member didn't see things the way I did and I didn't get to him in time.
Once Dad had been pumped with haldol, thorazine and morphine (2 at the same time), he could no longer rebound and died.
The medical community sells short the elderly. They're just an expense; anybody who's jumpy they can't deal with so they medicate them. Sorry to wound the feelings of Freeper medical personnel, but that's my experience.
When the surgeries and MRIs/CATs are so restricted, the doctors have no other alternatives beside using drugs for the elderly patients who can’t get surgery or treatment.
As more rx drugs go off patent or over the counter, we will see this become a standard of practice. Sedating and controlly the elderly with drugs until they leave this world will be the standard of care before this decade is over.
My wife and I don’t tolerate narcotics and inspite of the documented histories, we have had to fight to block the use of these drugs for us post op.
I tell people never leave a family memeber in the hosptial unattended ever! Ever!
Not to mention the fact that the Canadians would create a word like “overmedicalized”. Haven’t they done enough damage to the English language with their abolition of the possessive? (Environment Canada, Statistics Canada, etc.)
I happen to agree with this. At our house, we are both senior citizens and neither one of us takes a prescription drug—no need to.
According to dictionary.com:
overmedicalized - no dictionary results
My Dad lived with us until Spring 2010, and I know what you're saying about being right there to monitor everything.
He passed away in his sleep without the help of a drug cocktail.
The word “medicalize” is in the dictionary though. They just put a prefix “over” next to it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.