Title Using National Health Insurance Fund Database for the Assessment of Prescribing Quality and Efficiency /
Translation of Title Vaistų skyrimo kokybės ir efektyvumo vertinimas, naudojant Valstybinės ligonių kasos informacinę sistemą.
Authors Garuolienė, Kristina
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Pages 39
Keywords [eng] drug utilization studies ; prescribing quality indicators ; administrative databases ; prescribing efficiency ; rational drug use
Abstract [eng] The aim of this thesis is to evaluate to what extent the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) database is a relevant and reliable tool for the assessment of drug utilization, prescribing quality and efficiency. The comprehensive analysis of NHIF data on reimbursed medicines was carried out in this work. This enabled to assess the suitability of NHIF data for evaluation of prescribing patterns, prescribing quality and efficiency. NHIF database is suitable for drug utilization studies. However, all prescribing restrictions should be taken into account analyzing NHIF data since this database represents only the reimbursed part of the total drugs consumption in Lithuania. NHIF database can be used to assess prescribing quality, to analyze prevalence of drugs use, prescribing variations in different counties of Lithuanian. The results of this study showed, that half of the infants are treated with systemic antibiotics during the first year of life. The majority of antibiotics were prescribed for viral infections. Wide variation in prevalence of use of antidiabetic drugs was also observed between counties . It was shown that NHIF database is applicable for the evaluation of prescribing efficiency: the price reduction for reimbursed drugs was in the range of other European countries. NHIF expenditure for reimbursed drugs has been used efficiently for the study period 2000-2009.
Type Summaries of doctoral thesis
Language English
Publication date 2012