Washington, Nov 10 (Inditop.com) Computerised alerts, which compare medication brands, can help curb the impulse to prescribe unnecessarily expensive, heavily marketed drugs, according to a new study.
This would help in lowering the cost of healthcare, the study added.
The study found that when clinicians received alerts for four heavily marketed sleep medications to comparable generic equivalents, this helped in changing 23.3 percent prescriptions.
“Prescription drugs remain a key component of healthcare expenses, totalling more than $216 billion per year,” said study author Robert J. Fortuna, senior instructor in paediatrics and internal medicine, University of Rochester Medical Centre (URMC).
“If we can reduce unnecessary prescriptions for high-priced, heavily marketed drugs that are prescribed, we can directly lower some of the high costs associated with healthcare,” he added.
The alerts provided links to supplementary information, including supporting evidence for the recommendations, specific co-payment information and patient educational materials about sleep hygiene and insomnia.
They were triggered when a new prescription for a heavily marketed drug appeared in the electronic health records system.
Some clinicians received computerised alerts while others received alerts accompanied with educational sessions and a third control group of clinicians received no alerts.
The two groups of clinicians who received alerts were much less likely to start newly prescribed patients with name brand drugs.
Fortuna said that once a patient has already been prescribed a medication, it can be difficult to persuade the patient to change to a new medication, which explains why a steady rate of name brand prescriptions still persisted among the groups who received interventions.
Overall, the alerts were well received by clinicians and many reported that it prompted discussion regarding costs and alternative therapies with patients, said an URMC release.
The study was developed after a lawsuit against a pharmaceutical manufacturer in 2004 led to the creation of the Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant Program, which funded the study. The study was one of the programs’s early initiatives.
These findings were published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
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