SFMG - Société Française de Médecine Générale

Mai 2004 Hebbrecht G, Arnould P, Raineri F, Duhot D
Introduction
Prescription using common denomination (CD) has been introduced in some countries like Canada or the Netherlands about 10 years ago. CD prescription has been promoted by the French government since 2003 – 2004 to lessen drug prescription expenses.
Some studies have been realised in France to assess the scope of CD prescription, mainly based upon prescriptions reimbursed by social insurances and therefore linked to generic dispensing. [1] The use by GPs of electronic medical record and pharmaceutical databases is expanding in France.

Aim
We wanted to assess the use of common denomination (CD) by French GPs in their prescriptions.

Material and methods
We realised a cross sectional study. Volunteer GPs sent us a copy of their prescriptions issued during 6 different days in April 2006 with at least one drug linked to one of 11 clinical conditions : HBP, angina, thrombophlebitis, rhythmical disorders, heart insufficiency, diabetes, dyslipidemia, anxiety, depression, insomnia, upper respiratory infection.

For each prescription we registered the total number of drugs and the drugs prescribed in CD.
We studied:
• the part of GPs prescribing using CD,
• the part of drugs prescribed in CD,
• the part of prescriptions fully including only CD drugs,
• the part of prescriptions containing at least one CD drug using ATC classification the part of CD prescription in each ATC class.

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