Drug utilization in community pharmacy.
Drug utilization studies are a powerful means of identifying problem areas in drug consumption. The defined daily dose/1,000 inhabitants/day (DHD), provides an estimate of the proportion of the population who receive drug treatment in ambulatory care at national, regional, local and institutional levels. A new unit and its formula has been developed; defined daily dose/100 consumers/day (DCD), for the determination of drug utilization from community pharmacy allocated in cities where it is difficult to estimate the population covered by each pharmacy. This formula was applied to a community pharmacy to obtain the utilization of drugs for peptic ulcer treatment in 1990 and 1991. The data are compared with regional DHD data and there is good agreement between the results of the two methods. Data on non-prescription drug utilization are not easily available, and community pharmacists could improve the information available for this groups of drugs through use of the proposed formula and unit.
Iñesta
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Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs, Madrid, Spain.
D003157:Community Pharmacy Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011307:Drug Prescriptions; D006801:Humans; D008432:Mathematical Computing; D015233:Models, Statistical; D004366:Nonprescription Drugs / Q000008:administration & dosage
D004366:Nonprescription Drugs