AMA adopts policy aimed at defining, supporting deprescribing

ORLANDO - The American Medical Association (AMA) adopted policy during the Interim Meeting of its House of Delegates to ensure that deprescribing is considered a routine part of patient-centered care that supports safer, more effective medication use. Specifically, the new policy defines the practice of deprescribing and its key components, identifies barriers to implementation, and encourages further research and educational initiatives to increase awareness for physicians, care teams, and patients.

As defined under the new policy, deprescribing is the planned, supervised process of reducing or discontinuing medications when continued use may no longer provide clinical benefit, may cause harm that outweighs benefit, or is misaligned with a patient's goals of care, particularly among older adults and during transitions of care. Barriers to deprescribing include unclear professional roles, care fragmentation, and lack of clinical workflows and interoperability across healthcare entities.

"It is important that we recognize deprescribing as an essential, routine component of medication optimization and high-quality clinical care. Deprescribing is not simply about taking patients off medications, but about ensuring medications continue to provide more benefit than harm over time," said AMA Board Member Ilse R. Levin, DO, MPH & TM.

The AMA Council on Science and Public Health report that served as the basis for this policy noted that, as rates of polypharmacy continue to rise, deprescribing can help safely reduce medication burden and may improve selected clinical and economic outcomes when carried out through an individualized, structured, and supervised process. The report also highlighted challenges that exist related to patient awareness, physician training, role clarity, and fragmentation across transitions of care and practice settings. To that end, the new policy encourages broader understanding of deprescribing through further research on clinical outcomes and best practices, as well as educational initiatives on deprescribing for physicians, care teams, and patients.