Abstract
Life expectancy in Norway is steadily increasing and many elderly lives longer with chronic diseases and illnesses. Older people are large-scale consumers of both healthcare services and medications. Studies have estimated that almost one-third of Norwegians over the age of 65 were prescribed unnecessary medications and almost 60% were prescribed five or more drugs a year. Use of too many and potentially unnecessary medications amongst elderly increases the risk of side-effects and adverse events. Regular medication reviews carried out by general practitioners (GP) can be a useful tool to reduce the extent and consequences of polypharmacy. In 2013 the Norwegian parliament made it compulsory for GP`s to carry out regular medication reviews in patients using four or more drugs on a regular basis. At the same time a fixed reimbursement rate for systematic medication reviews were introduced in order to stimulate general practitioners to carry out such reviews more frequently. However, it is not yet known to which extent the GP`s consider such reviews useful and whether the new regulations have brought about any changes to their practice. In order to answer these questions, we designed a questionnaire with a total of ten questions that was sent to all general practitioners in Telemark county. We found that the majority of the respondents thought systematic medication reviews were useful and beneficial to their patients, and that most of them carried out such reviews on a regular basis. More than half of the GP`s claimed to carry out such reviews more frequently after the introduction of the reimbursement rate. Most of the GP`s were confident in making changes to the respective patient`s medications if considered necessary, regardless of whether the treatment was initiated by a specialist or not. Furthermore, Norwegian general practitioners have experienced a large increase in their workloads over the last few years, and time-consuming tasks such as systematic medication reviews are not financially attractive and thus not prioritized. We believe that strengthening the Norwegian general practice system, with shorter patient-lists and a closer collaboration with in-hospital specialists are necessary to allow the GP`s to handle the seemingly ever-increasing number of new tasks, including systematic medication reviews.