In 2000, pharmaceutical companies spent more than 15.7 billion dollars on promoting prescription drugs in the United States [2]. More than 4.8 billion dollars was spent on detailing, the one-on-one promotion of drugs to doctors by pharmaceutical sales representatives, commonly called drug reps. The average sales force expenditure for pharmaceutical companies is $875 million annually [3]. Unlike...

Using data from the 2001-2005 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, this study shows that nearly 40 percent of nonelderly adults with three or more chronic conditions had out-of-pocket expenses and premiums exceeding 5 percent of income for two consecutive years, compared with 20 percent of people who had a single chronic condition and 14 percent who had no chronic conditions. Prescription drug spe...

In Israel, diffusion of clinical information systems is almost universal in ambulatory medical services. The drug prescription module embedded in a widely-used electronic patient record system has the capacity to intervene and notify physicians about available generic or therapeutic substitute drugs, when their first choice is outside the insurer's preferred drug list. The objective of this pap...

HIGHLIGHTS Since the geopolitical developments of 1989, former centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe followed distinctively different pathways in national pharmaceutical expenditure evolution as compared to their free market Western European counterparts.Long term spending on pharmaceuticals expressed as percentage of total health expenditure was falling in free market economies as of 1...

A ubiquitous form of government intervention in insurance markets is to provide compulsory, but partial, public insurance coverage and to allow voluntary purchases of supplementary private insurance. This paper investigates the effects of such programs on insurance coverage for the risks not covered by the public program, using the example of the US Medicare program. I find that Medicare does n...

INTRODUCTION Our objective was to determine the relationship between polypharmacy (treatment with prescription drugs from 6 or more drug classes concurrently) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among US adults with arthritis. METHODS We conducted a retrospective cohort study that used 2-year longitudinal data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to analyze a cohort of 6,132 adult...

Nutrition is essential in critically ill patients, but translating caloric prescriptions into adequate caloric intake remains challenging. Caloric prescriptions (P), effective intake (I), and caloric needs (N), calculated with modified Harris-Benedict formulas, were recorded during seven consecutive days in ventilated patients. Adequacy of prescription was estimated by P/N ratio. I/P ratio asse...

BACKGROUND In the last few years we have witnessed many publicly-financed health services reaching a crisis point. Thus, drug expenditure is nowadays one of the main concerns of health managers, and its containment one of the first goals of health authorities in western countries. The objective of this study is to identify the effect of the perceived quality stated in commercial information, it...

BACKGROUND Pharmaceutical expenditure growth is a familiar feature in many Western health systems and is a real concern for policymakers. A state funded General Medical Services (GMS) scheme in Ireland experienced an increase in prescription expenditure of 414 % between 1998 and 2012. This paper seeks to explore the rationale for this growth by investigating the composition (Anatomical Therapeu...

INTRODUCTION: The economic impact of patients with chronic conditions is of paramount value, 10% of patients spend 70% of health resources. Since the 60's the pharmaceutical expenditure has been increasing due, among other reasons, the aging population and the consequent increase in chronic conditions. The current economic situation and this scenario make it a priority to open and develop innov...