Compliance and medication knowledge among elderly Japanese home-care recipients

Objectives: To investigate the risk factors for noncompliance in elderly ho me-care recipients; and to evaluate to what extent regular home visits and drug counseling by a pharmacist contribute to compliance. Subjects: One hundred and sixty-three elderly home-care recipients aged 62 years and over took part in this study. All subjects were cognitively norma l, and taking a regimen of one or more prescribed drugs. Medication use was observed by pharmacist-conducted interviews during home visits. Compliance was estimated by comparing prescribed regimens with medications actually b eing taken at home. Results: The mean age with (SD) of the subjects was 78.7 (8.3) years. Eight een per cent were regularly counseled by a pharmacist about medication. Poo r compliance with prescribed medications was associated with subjects aged 80 years and over, who were administering their own medication, consuming l ess than three meals a day, did not have one dose packages, and who were no t receiving pharmacist counseling. In multiple logistic regression analyses , frequency of meals (OR 5.99; 95% CI 1.25-28.79), pharmacist counseling (O R 5.32; 95% CI 2.00-14.20), and age (OR 0.96; 95% CI 0.92-1.00) were indepe ndent predictors of good compliance for homecare recipients with physical d isabilities. Compliance correlated inversely with knowledge of drug names, and drug purposes in the uncounseled group. Compliance, however, positively correlated with knowledge of drug purposes in the counseled group. Conclusion: In this study, compliance among elderly Japanese home-care reci pients was found to be associated with receiving pharmacist counseling, fre quency of meals, and age.