DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PRESCRIBED AND DISPENSED MEDICATIONS

Aims. To describe differences between general practice prescribed and dispensed medications in terms of patient characteristics and category of drug. Methods. Computerised prescribing records and prescriptions presented to pharmacies were retrospectively reviewed. All prescriptio ns generated from the computers of 13 practices over a 12 week period in 1992 were compared with prescriptions dispensed. Data from the two sources were matched and unmatched items were analysed to determine wh ether patient demography or category of drug prescribed influenced the rate of prescription dispensing. The nine most commonly prescribed dr ug categories were examined in detail. Results. A total of 49 756 item s were prescribed to 19 299 people and 43 302 (87.0%) of these were di spensed. Antibiotics were the most commonly prescribed category of dru g accounting for 17.6% of nondispensed items. There was no significant -difference by gender in the proportion of people (9.8%) failing to cl aim prescribed items, nor in the number of items (13.0%) prescribed bu t not dispensed. Differences in dispensing rates by community services card (CSC) status of patients were statistically significant for both numbers of people failing to uplift their medications and for numbers of items not dispensed (p < 0.001). There were also significant diffe rences by high user health card (HUH) eligibility (p < 0.005) and age (p < 0.001). Conclusions. There is a high rate of nondispensing of med icines prescribed in general practice. Patients eligible for governmen t subsidies are more likely than other patients to have their prescrip tions filled. Current pharmaceutical subsidies may be inadequately tar geted. There are no significant gender differences, while increasing a ge is associated with lower nondispensing rates. General practitioners need to be aware of these factors when making prescribing decisions.