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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 10, 1982)
I Page 2 Portland Observer, N ovem ber 10, 1982 Medicine and the elderly ¿HnUgfoaob <3Flnri»t Program to help elderly stay home Three Oregon State U niversity pharmacy professors are launching a unique project aimed at "keeping people out o f nursing homes” and saving hundreds o f thousands o f dollars—fo r families and the state o f Oregon—in the process. Thousands o f elderly people could be kept out o f nursing homes if they were able to properly manage their medications at home, the three pharmacy profs point out. Their project would make that possible. The researchers are Lee R. Strand- berg, William Simonson and Doug las Reid. “ Twenty-four percent o f the pa tients in Oregon nursing homes now are there simply because they cannot manage their medication consump tion,” says Strandberg. The OSU proposal, fo r which federal funding is now being sought, would take the proven good prac tices o f nursing home medication procedures and apply them to at- home elderly patients so they hope fu lly w on’ t have to enter nursing homes in the future. Local pharmacists would play a key role in the improved home phar macy service. They would package required medications on a coded 31- day punch out card so that the el derly at home could have their daily medicines available on a handy, unit dose basis. A t breakfast or on aris ing, they would simply push open the plastic bubble on the card cover ing the tablets, capsules, etc., that they are to take at that time on the particular day o f the month. Other punch out cards would con tain medicines to be taken at noon and at night. Cards would have code holes in an upper corner so the pa tients could id e n tify them. The cards would also serve as records of which medicines had been taken. Being able to stay at home "w here they want to be” rather than going in to nursing homes would provide a great lift for many older persons and would mean tre mendous savings in money as well as reduced trauma and troubles for the individuals and their families, says Strandberg, who is spearheading the project. "The public ought to know what we’ re trying to do; to increase the quality o f care and life and to de crease the costs. We hope to get funding next year and if it is success ful we believe that it will be adopted as standard practice in Oregon, per haps even before the end o f the pro posed three-year research project. "W e ’ re not the first to come up with the concept but we’ ll be the first to try it on a large, statewide scale if funding comes throught,” Strandberg explained. " I became aware of this innovative way to ap proach drug therapy from a com pany in Silver Springs, Md. There’s also a community pharmacy in Fort Smith, A rk., that makes up 31-day dispensing cards fo r some o f their elderly patients living by themselves or wishing to m aintain their in dependence while living with famil) members. Under the broadened OSU propo sal that could be adopted in any Oregon com m unity, pharmacists would have more involvement in pa tient counseling and screening o f pa tient medication records to see indi vidual drugs are not working against one another or producing adverse reactions. The costs for the expanded phar macist service would increase, o f course, but the savings in suffering, Ellsberg, Berrigan speak on peace Anti-war activists Daniel Ellsberg and Daniel Berrigan will talk about ending the nuclear arms race on Sunday, November 21st, at the First Congregational Church, 1126 S.W. Park at 12:30 p.m. Adm ission is free. Daniel Ellsberg and Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J., have practiced ivil disobedience as a means o f resisting the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race. In 1971 Ellsberg released top secret documents about the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Berrigan, along with his brother, P h ilip , was one o f the Catonsville Nine who, in 1970-1971, served 18 months in prison fo r burning draft files with homemade lapalm. Berrigan was convicted o f burglary, crim inal mischief and crim inal conspiracy fo r breaking into a GE plant in Pennsylvania and trying to beat two nuclear nose cones into plowshares with hammers. w orry and avoided nursing home and hospital costs would far over shadow the other considerations, says Strandberg. "Savings conceivably could reach a million dollars a year for the state, and its Department o f Human Re sources, that picks up the b ill for much o f the medication and nursing home charges,” Strandberg be lieves. "W e know that a lot o f old people who are livin g at home or w ith fam ily members or friends have trouble managing their medi cations. As a result, they end up in nursing homes, or end up in hospi tals because o f too much or too little medicine or problems that grow out o f the medications themselves, such as over medication or drug reactions that occur when different medicines are taken in combination. ” Pharmacists are perhaps more m indful o f such potential reaction problems than even physicians, Strandberg suggested. "H a v in g pharmacists participate in the re view o f medication regimens has proven o f tremendous w orth in nursing homes and hospitals. And much has been learned o f value from nursing home experiences with medications,” he added. "O u r plan is to transport the good pharmacy procedures and drug distribution systems found in Oregon and U.S. nursing homes to an outpatient home setting.” W illiam Simonson, the second pharmacy professor invovled in the new proposal is one o f the nation’s top authorities on drugs (medicines) and the elderly. A book of his on the subject is scheduled for publication in early 1983, and he is a member of IJfloinrrs JFrnnt ¿nnllufa OOJ (he national advisory panel on geria trics, U.S. Pharmacopeial Conven tion. "A b o u t one third o f (he elderly fa il to take their medicines p ro p e rly ,” Simonson reported. "A n d medication consumption increases dram atically w ith age. Men and women 65 and over receive 11.2 and 14.3 new or re fill precriptions, re spectively, each year now on the av erage. 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