Compliance and medication knowledge among elderly Japanese home-care recipients

To investigate the risk factors for noncompliance in elderly home-care recipients; and to evaluate to what extent regular home visits and drug counseling by a pharmacist contribute to compliance. One hundred and sixty-three elderly home-care recipients aged 62 years and over took part in this study. All subjects were cognitively normal, 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 being taken at home. The mean age with (SD) of the subjects was 78.7 (8.3) years. Eighteen per cent were regularly counseled by a pharmacist about medication. Poor compliance with prescribed medications was associated with subjects aged 80 years and over, who were administering their own medication, consuming less than three meals a day, did not have one dose packages, and who were not receiving pharmacist counseling. In multiple logistic regression analyses, frequency of meals (OR 5.99; 95% CI 1.25-28.79), pharmacist counseling (OR 5.32; 95% CI 2.00-14.20), and age (OR 0.96; 95% CI 0.92-1.00) were independent predictors of good compliance for home-care recipients with physical disabilities. 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. In this study, compliance among elderly Japanese home-care recipients was found to be associated with receiving pharmacist counseling, frequency of meals, and age.