Summary of findings 3. Summary of findings: behavioural interventions alone.

Behavioural interventions aimed at improving medication‐taking ability and/or medication adherence compared with usual care for older community‐dwelling patients taking multiple medications
Patient or population: older patients using at least 4 regular prescription medications (and/or their carers) Settings: community setting (including discharge from a hospital or other healthcare facility to the community) Intervention: interventions involving behavioural components only Comparison: usual care
Outcomes	Impacts	No of studies	Quality of the evidence (GRADE)
Medication‐taking ability Follow‐up: N/A	No studies that evaluated medication‐taking ability were found	‐	‐
Medication adherence (dichotomous) Follow‐up: 3 to 18 months	Behavioural interventions may improve the proportion of people who are adherent (dichotomous adherence outcome) Four studies (528 participants) were included in a meta‐analysis. Risk ratio was 1.22 (95% CI 1.07 to 1.38), indicating behavioural interventions increased the absolute number of adherent participants by 10.5% (3.3% to 18.1% more)	4	Lowa,b
Medication adherence (continuous) Follow‐up: 6 to 12 months	We are uncertain of the effects of behavioural interventions on medication adherence when continuous measures of adherence are used Three studies were identified, but results could not be pooled in a meta‐analysis due to differences in reporting. All 3 reported significant impact on medication adherence, 2 showed large effects on adherence based on pill count, and 1 showed moderate improvement in self‐reported adherence using daily logbooks to calculate percentage of days adherent	3	Very lowa,b,c
Health‐related quality of life Follow‐up: 3 months	We are uncertain of the effects of behavioural interventions on health‐related quality of life. Only 1 study was identified, which found that the intervention resulted in worsening quality of life using the Minnesota Living With Heart Failure Questionnaire	1	Very lowa,d,e
ED/Hospital admissions Follow‐up: 3 to 6 months	We are uncertain of the effects of behavioural interventions on ED/hospital admissions. Two studies (70 participants) were included in a meta‐analysis. Risk ratio was 0.21 (95% CI 0.08 to 0.55), indicating behavioural interventions may reduce the absolute number of patients admitted to ED/hospital by 42.9% (49.9% to 24.4% fewer)	2	Very lowa,f
Mortality Follow‐up: N/A	No studies that evaluated the effects of behavioural interventions on mortality were found	‐	‐
CI: confidence interval; ED: emergency department.
GRADE Working Group grades of evidence. High quality: further research is very unlikely to change our confidence in the estimate of effect. Moderate quality: further research is likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimate of effect and may change the estimate. Low quality: further research is very likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimate of effect and is likely to change the estimate. Very low quality: we are very uncertain about the estimate.

^aOne mark deducted due to high or unclear risk of bias across multiple domains including sequence generation and allocation concealment.

^bOne mark deducted due to variations in intervention, provider, setting, duration, and outcome measures.

^cOne mark deducted due to low participant numbers.

^dOne mark deducted due to indirectness of evidence as the Minnesota Living With Heart Failure Questionnaire is specific for heart failure populations and results may not be generalisable to general population of older people.

^eOne mark deducted due to low participant numbers from a single small study.

^fTwo marks deducted due to low participant numbers and low number of events.