Table 3.

Stepwise multivariate analyses of medication‐related factors predictive of polypharmacy score, likelihood to cause harm, or ability to simplify

Medication Factor	R 2	Beta (coefficient)	t	P ‐value
Polypharmacy score	0.89
Number of medicines		0.83	8.45	<0.0001
Drug burden index		0.21	2.17	0.047
Medicines associated with harm	0.73
Number of medicines		0.57	4.01	0.01
Beers medicines		0.49	3.5	0.003
Ability to simplify medicines	0.64
Number of medicines		0.44	2.41	0.03
STOPP criteria		0.48	2.65	0.018

Variables from the univariate analyses with a P < 0.10 were included in the multivariate stepwise linear regression model and falls‐risk medicine was excluded from the model to avoid collinearity with Drug Burden Index (DBI).

R ² assesses goodness‐of‐fit of model.