A household survey on the extent of home medication storage. A cross-sectional study from rural Crete, Greece.

Background: Patients often have multiple chronic diseases, use multiple prescriptions and over the counter medications resulting in polypharmacy. Many of them store these medications for future use in their homes, rather than take them as directed by their physician, resulting in a waste of health care resources, and potentially dangerous misuse.

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the magnitude of medication home hoarding, the exchange of medication with family/friends, families' beliefs about the medication use, source of medication, pharmaceutical class, cost of stored medicine and conditions of storage.