Antihypertensive and antidiabetic drugs constitute a major portion of drug usage and expenditure in general medical outpatient clinics, with newer agents disproportionately driving costs.
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Newer agents drive disproportionate outpatient costs; cross-sectional data leaves open whether targeted prescribing interventions can optimize value.
OBJECTIVES: To examine the prescribing patterns, particularly antihypertensive and antidiabetic drugs, in a hospital outpatient clinic and to evaluate the expenditure incurred. METHODS: Prescriptions from a general medical outpatient clinic in a teaching hospital were collected for 4 weeks. Drug expenditures were calculated. RESULTS: A total of 622 prescriptions containing 1903 items were collected. Antihypertensive and antidiabetic drugs accounted for 25.9 and 9.1% usage, respectively. Calcium channel blocking agents, angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors and beta-blocking agents were the most popular antihypertensive drugs used. Sulphonylureas were the most frequently prescribed antidiabetic agents. Amlodipine, doxazosin and sotalol accounted for 4.5% of all prescription items but 27.8% of the total drug expenditure. CONCLUSION: The use of antihypertensive and antidiabetic drugs accounted for most of the drug usage in this study. Use of newer and more expensive agents has further increased drug expenditure. Monitoring drug usage and their correlations with clinical outcomes are warranted.
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Yuen et al. (1998) studied this question.
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