Does the Elderly’s Number of Prescribed Medications across Months Matter? National Cohort versus Single-Center Cohort

Objectives: To investigate the monthly number of prescribed medication (NPM) patterns among different elderly populations and the factors associated with monthly NPM changes. Methods: This retrospective cohort study was conducted using the databases obtained from National Health Insurance Research Databases and a 2000-bed academic medical center in Taiwan (i.e., single-center cohort). We compared the monthly NPMs, demographic characteristics, disease states, and health care contacts among the National Health Insurance elderly cohorts in 2006 and 2007, and for those elderly in the national and single-center cohorts who had outpatient visits from November to October in 2006 to 2007 and 2007 to 2008, respectively. Generalized estimating equation analyses of repeated measures were performed for monthly NPMs. Results: The average monthly NPMs among the National Health Insurance elderly cohort was 2.33 in 2006 and 4.39 in 2007, respectively. After controlling for other factors, the increment in the proportion of ee front matter Copyright & 2015, International S