Clinical Utility of Medication-Based Risk Scores to Reduce Polypharmacy and Potentially Avoidable Healthcare Utilization

Abstract

The management of multiple chronic health conditions often requires patients to be exposed to polypharmacy to improve their health and enhance their quality of life. However, exposure to polypharmacy has been associated with an increased risk for adverse effects, drug-drug interactions, inappropriate prescribing, medication nonadherence, increased healthcare utilization such as emergency department visits and hospitalizations, and costs. Medication-based risk scores have been utilized to identify patients who may benefit from deprescribing interventions and reduce rates of inappropriate prescribing. These risk scores may also be utilized to prompt targeted discussions between patients and providers regarding medications or medication classes contributing to an individual’s risk for harm, eventually leading to the deprescribing of the offending medication(s). This opinion will describe existing medication-based risk scores in the literature, their utility in identifying patients at risk for specific adverse events, and how they may be incorporated in health-care settings to reduce rates of potentially inappropriate polypharmacy and avoidable healthcare utilization and costs.