Cure For Opioid Epidemic? Better Compliance Packaging Could Combat Prescription Pill Abuse Among Seniors

Teenagers aren’t the only ones in the U.S. who have been raiding medicine cabinets and abusing opioids. The prescription drug epidemic, which led to the overdoses of more than 33,000 people in 2015, has included senior citizens who overuse painkillers, too.

According to a Pain Medicine News report published on Friday, there are two reasons doctors said opioid addiction and abuse is becoming so common among the elderly: overprescribing and forgetfulness among seniors.

Declining memory loss coupled with having to manage multiple prescriptions has become one of the biggest causes for abuse among aging opioid users, Dr. Theodore Cicero of Washington State University School of Medicine said. The psychiatry professor, who co-authored a 2012 study on opioid-dependent patients in treatment, told Pain Medicine News that the most common thing he noticed about older patients was that they struggled to remember whether they took their pills. Forgetting often resulted in seniors doubling up on medication and increasing their chances of overdose.

Along with age-related vulnerabilities making seniors more susceptible to opioid abuse, Cicero said physicians were more likely to hand over prescriptions to the elderly without all the rigorous interrogating health questions younger patients sometimes experience before getting a prescription.

"[Older people] say it was very easy for them to go in to a doctor and complain about rheumatoid arthritis or some other issues, that they had tried [over-the-counter] pain relief and nothing seemed to work," Cicero said of patients 45 and older that were included in his study.

Nearly 12 million Medicare beneficiaries received at least one opioid prescription in 2015, 8.5 million of whom were 65 and older, according to a June 2016 Office of Inspector General report. Overall, the report found 30 percent of Medicare patients were taking at least one commonly abused opioid prescription, whereas seniors were found to have five addictive painkiller prescriptions or more at one time.

Larry Twersky, CEO of TimerCap LLC., a compliance packaging company that produces vial caps that time and track people’s medications, told International Business Times that better packaging could be the most effective way to combat the opioid crisis, especially among forgetful seniors.

“When EMTs get called on for emergencies due to overdose or somebody not breathing the first question they ask is if the patient took anything. All [a caller] can do is look at a pill bottle or look in a seven-day pill box and go,’ I don’t know. Did they take it or not?’” Twersky said. “We know that 50 percent of the population do not take their medications as prescribed. We believe that’s due to inadequate packaging for a lot of people. This happens all the time [people asking themselves], ‘Did I take it?’ I think it’s a compliance packaging issue.”

TimerCap, which can be found in apothecary aisles at drug store chains throughout the U.S., is made with a built-in LCD timer that automatically keeps track of the time passed. The vial cap can be used to help people remember when they last took their medication and also indicates when the vial was opened at the wrong time. The cap even has an app for smartphone users that can provide relevant information about medications, a patient’s history with the pills and even send alerts when someone doesn’t take their medication or open their pill bottle on time.

“It should be illegal to dispense an opioid or any type of medication that impairs without some way the patient is made aware of the last time they took the meds, so that they can decide when it’s safe to operate or do any other type of activity that might engage them in harmful activities,” he said.