Abstract
AIMS: Polypharmacy serves as a quality indicator in residential aged care facilities (RACFs) due to concerns about inappropriate medication use. However, aggregated polypharmacy rates at a single time offer limited value. Longitudinal analysis of polypharmacy patterns provides valuable insights into identifying potential overuse of medicines. We aimed to determine long-term trajectories of polypharmacy (≥9 medicines) and factors associated with each polypharmacy trajectory group. METHODS: This was a longitudinal cohort study using electronic data from 30 RACFs in New South Wales, Australia. We conducted group-based trajectory modelling to identify and characterize polypharmacy trajectories over 3 years. We evaluated the model fitness using the Bayesian Information Criterion, entropy (with a value of ≥0.8 considered ideal) and several other metrics. RESULTS: The study included 2837 permanent residents (median age = 86 years, 61.7% female and 47.4% had dementia). We identified five polypharmacy trajectory groups: group 1 (no polypharmacy, 46.0%); group 2 (increasing polypharmacy, 9.4%); group 3 (decreasing polypharmacy, 9.2%); group 4 (increasing-then decreasing polypharmacy, 10.0%), and group 5 (persistent polypharmacy, 25.4%). The model showed excellent performance (e.g., entropy = 0.9). Multinomial logistic regressions revealed the profile of each trajectory group (e.g., group 5 residents had higher odds of chronic respiratory disease compared with group 1). CONCLUSIONS: Our study identified five polypharmacy trajectory groups, including one with over a quarter of residents following a persistently high trajectory, signalling concerning medication overuse. Quality indicator programs should adopt tailored metrics to monitor diverse polypharmacy trajectory groups, moving beyond the current one-size-fits-all approach and better capturing the evolving dynamics of residents' medication regimens.