Annual checkup needed for Canadian seniors on multiple prescription medications: study

To avoid complications from overprescribing, a new Canadian study recommends health-care providers do annual checkups for seniors 65 and older who take five or more prescription medications. (Yaroslav Shuraev/Pexels)

A group of Canadian researchers is recommending that seniors who take several prescription medications undergo an annual review of the drugs they take to avoid the growing problem of overprescribing.

They say the recommendation is not just about avoiding medical complications of taking too many drugs, such as increased risk of injurious falls, confusion, and death — overprescribing can also cost the health-care system an estimated $1 billion per year.

Following a study by researchers at McGill University and the University of Toronto, the experts published a new Canadian guideline calling for health-care professionals to do annual check-ups for seniors aged 65 and older who take five or more prescription drugs.

The researchers found that over the years, the number of medications seniors 65 and older are taking has been increasing.

“Where I work on internal medicine, I sometimes admit patients to the hospital who are taking 15 medications or even 20,” said co-lead author Dr. Emily McDonald, associate professor in McGill’s Department of Medicine, in an interview on Wednesday.

In Canada, nearly two in three adults aged 65 or older take five or more medications, and the study’s authors say that complex drugs are rarely studied together and can interact in unpredictable ways, leading to side effects that can sometimes be mistaken for common signs of aging.

McDonald said the annual review could be done by a family doctor, geriatrician, nurse practitioner, or pharmacist.

“We do know that 45 per cent of seniors take one or more potentially inappropriate medications,” she said.

“So identifying those and flagging those and discussing them with the patient and their family and seeing if they’re interested in potentially coming off that medication if it’s safe to do so would really benefit patients and improve safety.”

The reviews can be done during routine medical visits or by request, she added, to reduce or stop a prescription if appropriate.

An “Appropriate Use Strategy” for prescription drugs was one of the priorities included in Bill C-64, which was adopted in Parliament in 2024.

The study, “Screening for potentially inappropriate prescribing in primary care,” was published in Canadian Family Physician. It also calls for governments to fund the annual prescription reviews.

The Canadian Medication Appropriateness and Deprescribing Network has published a Medication Review Service Finder to help seniors find places where medication reviews can be done.

With files from CTV News’ Caroline Van Vlaardingen