[Validity of an indicator of the quality of pharmacological prescription in patients with hyperlipemia].
OBJECTIVE
The computer system for billing prescriptions (SIFAR in Spanish) enables indicators to be extracted for the study and follow-up of the use of medicines in the INSALUD primary care areas. Concretely, we studied the indicator referring to pensioners consumption of lipid-lowering drugs (PCLL), not validated, and whose value is expected to drop as quality increases. The objective was to calculate the correlation of the indicator of prescription of lipid-lowering drugs on the SIFAR with the proportion of lipid-lowerers prescribed correctly for pensioners (PCP).


METHODS
A descriptive study of correlation between two indicators of drug prescription.


METHODS
Four health districts in Madrid.


METHODS
The prescriptions of 49 general practitioners, chosen at random on the basis of three strata defined by the value of the indicator, were studied. Each doctor filled out a protocol of data for each pensioner patient to whom he/she prescribed a lipid-lowerer during the study period.


RESULTS
The PCLL and PCP indicators were compared through the correlation of Spearman. 6,779 prescriptions for 1,125 patients were collected from the 49 participating doctors. The mean percentage of lipid-lowerers correctly prescribed was 31.9%, figure that rose to 77.5% when the LDL value was not specified. The correlation between the PCLL and the PCP was near zero.


CONCLUSIONS
The PCLL indicator of the SIFAR does not discriminate quality in lipid-lowering drug prescription to people over 64.
Fernández San Martín
M
M
Departamento de Ciencias Sanitarias y Médico-Sociales. Universidad de Alcalá. Madrid. maribel.fernandez@uah.es
López Bilbao
C
C
Escortell Mayor
E
E
Sanz Cuesta
T
T
Fidalgo García
L
L
Rodríguez Escolar
C
C
Vicaf g
D000368:Aged; D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000592:standards*; D004363:Drug Utilization / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005194:Family Practice / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D006949:Hyperlipidemias / Q000188:drug therapy*; D008875:Middle Aged; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013030:Spain