Patient Eligibility for HMR
The item is available to people living in the community who meet the criteria for a DMMR. The item is not available for in-patients of a hospital, or care recipients in residential aged care facilities.
DMMRs are targeted at patients who are likely to benefit from such a review:
Patients for whom quality use of medicines may be an issue or; patients who are at risk of medication misadventure because of factors such as their co-morbidities, age or social circumstances, the characteristics of their medicines, the complexity of their medication treatment regimen, or a lack of knowledge and skills to use medicines to their best effect.
Examples of risk factors known to predispose people to medication related adverse events are:
- currently taking five or more regular medications;
- taking more than 12 doses of medication per day;
- significant changes made to medication treatment regimen in the last three months;
- medication with a narrow therapeutic index or medications requiring therapeutic monitoring;
- symptoms suggestive of an adverse drug reaction;
- sub-optimal response to treatment with medicines;
- suspected non-compliance or inability to manage medication related therapeutic devices;
- patients having difficulty managing their own medicines because of literacy or language difficulties, dexterity problems or impaired sight, confusion/dementia or other cognitive difficulties;
- patients attending a number of different doctors, both general practitioners and specialists; and
- recent discharge from a facility / hospital (in the last four weeks).”
Potentially any patient with chronic disease taking multiple medications may be eligible and are likely to benefit from a Home Medicines Review.
The patient eligibility criteria are reproduced here from the Medicare Benefits Schedule