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. 2013 Apr 5;27(6):408–411. [Article in Spanish] doi: 10.1016/S0212-6567(01)78822-1

¿Existe conciencia de gasto farmacéutico en la atención primaria reformada?

Is there awareness of pharmaceutical expenditure in the reformed primary care system?

FJ Mengíbar Torres 1,*
PMCID: PMC7676013  PMID: 11334578

Abstract

Objective

To evaluate the effectiveness of feeding information on pharmacy back to primary care doctors in order to create awareness (knowledge) of pharmaceutical expenditure (PE).

Design

Retrospective cross-sectional study, through personal interview.

Setting

Reformed PC, Sabadell, Barcelona.

Participants

The 80 PC doctors working with primary care teams.

Interventions

As the personal feed-back on PE, each doctor was asked for the PE generated during 1997 and the mean cost of prescriptions to active and pensioner patients. The statistical test used was the t test to compare means for paired data, with p < 0.05 the required level of significance.

Results

Out of the total doctors interviewed (80), 71 replies were obtained for the annual PE and 76 for the mean cost of prescriptions, for both active and pensioner patients. Significant differences were found between the annual PE in reality and doctors’ estimates: around twelve million pesetas. The differences between the real mean costs of prescription and the estimates were also significant.

Conclusions

In view of the results, it is concluded that there is no awareness of PE among the doctors in the reformed PC in our area. This poses a question over the efficacy of feed-back of pharmacy information in order to create this awareness. This information needs to be more frequent and richer in content, and to be complemented by other measures.

Key words: Primary care, Pharmaceutical expenditure, Feed-back of pharmaceutical information

Footnotes

Este trabajo ha contado con la ayuda financiera no condicionada de la beca académica concedida al Centre de Recerca en Economia i Salut (CRES) de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra por The Merck Company Foundation, institución sin finalidad de lucro de Merck & Co. Inc., Whitehouse Station, New Yersey, USA.

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