[How many prescription drugs does a general practitioner handle? A prescription database study].
BACKGROUND
General practitioners must know of treatments for a broad range of diseases, but it may be difficult to keep abreast of the effects and adverse reactions of a large spectrum of drugs, and a good quality of prescribing implies the use of a limited number of analogue products. The aims were to investigate the number of different drugs prescribed per practice and to analyse the influence of practice characteristics on this number.


METHODS
The study comprised 173 general practices (99 single and 74 group practices in the County of Funen, Denmark. All prescription registered on the Odense Pharmaco-epidemiological Database (OPED) were analysed. The main outcome measure was the number of different drugs prescribed per dispensing unit.


RESULTS
The number of different drugs prescribed per dispensing unit varied almost fourfold (range: 102 to 381) and four practice characteristics were able to predict 74% of this variation. Practices with several doctors, a high number of patients listed per doctor, a high percentage of elderly patients, and a heavy workload showed the highest number of different drugs prescribed.


CONCLUSIONS
There is almost a fourfold variation in the number of different drugs used in general practice, and three-quarters of this variation is associated with factors related to the practice.
Bjerrum
L
L
Forskningsenheden for Almen Medicin, og afdeling for klinisk farmakologi og, Syddansk Universitet, Odense. lbjerrum@health.sdu.dk
Bergman
U
U
D016208:Databases, Factual; D003718:Denmark; D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004363:Drug Utilization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005194:Family Practice / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D017891:Pharmacoepidemiology; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians'; D012042:Registries