Mornington Peninsula Division of General Practice

Programs

Home Medicines Review.

The Home Medicines Review program is a joint initiative between the Australian Division of General Practice and the Pharmacy Guild. The program encourages patients with complex medication needs to have a home visit with a qualified pharmacist to improve medication management. 

  The general practitioner is a key component of the process. A GP referral is essential and the patient should satisfy one of the following risk factors:

  • Currently taking 5 or more regular medicines
  • Taking more than 12 doses of medication a day
  • Significant changes made to medication regimen in the last 3 months
  • Medication with a narrow therapeutic index or medications requiring therapeutic monitoring
  • Symptoms suggestive of an adverse drug reaction
  • Sub-therapeutic 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
  • Attending a number of different doctors, both general practitioners and specialists
  • Recent discharge from a facility/hospital ( in the last 4 weeks)
  • Other medication problems

At the home visit, the pharmacist interviews the patient about their use and understanding of their medication. Over the counter and complementary medicines are also included. A report is provided for the general practitioner. This is reviewed  with the patient at a subsequent visit and any improvements to medication management are agreed on.

A PowerPoint presentation on the HMR process is available from here. 
Consumer Brochure available in
Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Macedonian, Maltese, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese

Home Medicines Review Templates
The following templates were developed by the Port Macquarie Division of General Practice, The Central Bayside Division of General Practice and the Pharmacy Guild of Queensland.  Please note opening the template files may destroy the template fields within them, please download and save the files. Then follow the instructions in the attached PowerPoint.

Program Worker         Cleeve Charles

(Last Updated 08 January 2007)