Repeat prescribing for elderly patients.

Guideline-Based Prescribing in Frail Elderly Patients.

Inappropriate medication prescribing for elderly ambulatory care patients.

BACKGROUND Inappropriate medication use in elderly patients has been linked to a large share of adverse drug reactions and to excess health care utilization. METHODS Trends in the prevalence of potentially inappropriate drug prescribing at ambulatory care visits by elderly persons from 1995 to 2000 were examined with data from office-based physicians in the National Ambulatory Medical Care Su...

Prescribing psychotropic medication for elderly patients: some physicians' perspectives.

BACKGROUND The inappropriate use of psychotropic medication is widespread and has potential consequences for the autonomy of elderly people. This study explored physicians' perceptions and attitudes and the decision-making process associated with prescribing psychotropic medications for elderly patients. METHODS In this qualitative study conducted between February and April 1996, 9 of 12 phys...

The scale of repeat prescribing.

BACKGROUND Repeat prescribing has long been seen as a potential cause of poor clinical care, despite its obvious advantage to both doctors and patients. Previous studies have had no common definition of the term, and have been small in scale, but it is clear that repeat prescribing has increased over the past 25 years with a recent acceleration due to computerization. Managing the process has b...

Reducing prescribing costs through computer controlled repeat prescribing.

A small reduction in prescribing costs is reported from a general practice that has been using a computer for repeat prescribing for three years. The possible reasons for this are discussed. The information available from the Prescription Pricing Authority (PPA) and from practice workload measurements was found to be inconclusive. An elaboration of the computer-controlled system of repeat presc...