Krska 2001.

Study characteristics
Methods	Randomised controlled trial UK
Participants	332 participants aged over 65 years with at least 2 chronic conditions and taking at least 4 prescribed medications regularly; 6 general practices in Grampian, UK
Interventions	Pharmaceutical care plan drawn up by a pharmacist based on medical records and participant interviews, and then implemented by the practice team
Outcomes	Primary and secondary (no distinction specified): Pharmaceutical care issues (PCI scale) HRQoL (SF36 scores) Health service utilisation including GP and practice nurse contacts, OPD attendance, use of social services and hospital admissions Economic: direct monthly costs of prescribed medications per participant
Notes	Study duration and follow‐up 3 months Comparison: controls had review of drug therapy by pharmacist but no pharmaceutical care plan implemented
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Text simply states "patients were randomly allocated"
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Randomisation method not specified
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	No blinding
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	87% follow‐up, balanced
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	None apparent
Other bias	Low risk	None apparent
Protection against contamination	High risk	Authors state that contamination of control participants could have occurred but stated that a cluster design would have been more problematic due to differential prescribing patterns between practices
Reliable primary outcomes	Unclear risk	PCIs previously used but unclear whether validated as outcome measure
Baseline measurement	Low risk	Some baseline imbalance between groups for PCIs and admissions; not clinically significant