Reliability of a modified medication appropriateness index in ambulatory older persons.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the reliability of a medication appropriateness index (MAI) modified for elderly outpatients in a non-Veterans Affairs setting.


METHODS
Reliability study.


METHODS
General community.


METHODS
Ten community-dwelling elderly (> 65 y) taking five or more regularly scheduled medications and participating in a university-based health service intervention study.


METHODS
Interrater reliability of MAI ratings of 65 medications made by two clinical pharmacists for individual items and for an overall summed score was calculated by use of kappa statistics and intraclass correlation coefficient.


RESULTS
The interrater agreement for each of the individual MAI items was high for both appropriate and inappropriate ratings and ranged from 80% to 100% (overall kappa = 0.64). Overall agreement for the summed score was good (intraclass correlation = 0.80).


CONCLUSIONS
The modified MAI is a reliable instrument for evaluation of medication appropriateness in a non-Veterans Affairs, ambulatory, elderly population and may provide pharmacists with a practical and standard method to evaluate patients' drug regimens and identify some potential drug-related problems.
Fitzgerald
L S
LS
School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA.
Hanlon
J T
JT
Shelton
P S
PS
Landsman
P B
PB
Schmader
K E
KE
Pulliam
C C
CC
Williams
M E
ME
D000368:Aged; D000553:Ambulatory Care / Q000191:economics / Q000592:standards*; D004347:Drug Interactions; D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000592:standards; D004358:Drug Therapy / Q000191:economics / Q000592:standards*; D064420:Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015588:Observer Variation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results