Prescription of generic pharmaceutic specialities in discharge reports from a university hospital

BACKGROUND: The use of generic pharmaceutic specialities (GPS) has risen la tely as a necessary tool in the control of sanitary expenses. This use is b ecoming of high importance, even in the non-medical media. Our aim was to s tablish its use profile in patients discharged from a University Hospital. MATERIAL AND METHOD: To analyse the use of GPS in 256 discharge reports, ra ndomly chosen from the clinical Documentation Service, belonging to eight d ifferent Units for two months (June-July 2000), RESULTS: A total of 1233 prescriptions were reported. Among them, there was an equivalent generic drug to the medication prescribed in 220 cases (18%) , but only in five ocasions one of them was indicated (2.2%). The cost of t he drugs with an equivalent form in GPS was calculated in 707,521 pts. This cost could have been reduced to 505,865 pts. taking into account the avera ge price of the GPS, In case of indicating the cheapest one, the cost could have been 479,672 pts. CONCLUSIONS: There is an important proportion of GPS to indicate as an alte rnative to the usual medicaments prescribed. However, nowadays, the GPS pre scription is not a usual practice among the hospital physicians.