Prescribing Practices of Physicians at Different Health Care Institutions

Objective: Irrational pharmacotherapy is a widespread health care problem, and knowing the prescription practices of physicians at an institutional level can present solutions. This study aimed to investi-gate whether physicians ’ prescribing patterns showed differences at the level of the health care institution. Materials and Methods: Photocopies of 3201 prescriptions written at primary health care centers (PHCs), public hospitals, private hospi-tals, and university hospitals (UHs) were collected from 10 provinces in Turkey. The prescriptions were evaluated according to prescribing indicators, and the details of drug utilization were compared for dif-ferent health care institutions. Results: The average number of medicines per prescription was 2.83, and the highest average was noted in PHCs (2.96). The average cost per prescription was US $51.57, and the highest average cost was found in UHs (US $166.10). The most frequently prescribed drug group was different among health care institutions. With the excep-tion of UHs, the “cold-cough medicines ” were the most frequently prescribed medicines at all of the institutions. Thirty-nine percent of the prescriptions included antibiotics. Conclusion: Despite the similarities between the distributions of diagnoses on prescriptions by health care institutions, the contents of the prescriptions showed differences. The high levels of prescrip-tions for “cold-cough medicines, ” whose use is widely debated, and the widespread tendency of physicians to prescribe antibiotics sug-gest that there is a growing need for disseminating the principles of rational pharmacotherapy. Furthermore, institutional differences must be considered when conducting rational pharmacotherapy programs