Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
12th Annual NorPEN Meeting, Arhus, Danimarka, 14 - 15 Kasım 2019, ss.51-52
INTRODUCTION
Generic drug (GD) use is encouraged and special policies are developed worldwide for strategies to
mitigate economic burden of drugs.
OBJECTIVES
We aimed to investigate the prescription of GDs in primary care.
METHODS
We analyzed electronic prescriptions registered to national Prescription Information System by
primary care physicians in Turkey in a four-year period (2013-2016). For each year, we evaluated
the number of prescriptions and drugs, cost, GD rates with their distribution by gender and age
groups.
RESULTS
In total, 518,335,821 prescriptions and 1,457,034,275 drugs (annual average 364,258,569) were
prescribed. Women constituted 59.3% of the population and 21.9% were <18 years. The years of the
highest and lowest percentages of GDs were 2016 (54.4%) and 2014 (53.6%). This value ranged
between 53.7-54.7% for women and 53.4-54.1% for men in each of the four years examined. In
each year, the percentage of GDs decreased as the age group increased [highest observed in <18-
year-old group (range: 64.0-64.5%) and the lowest (range: 46.0-47.1%) in >75-year-old group. The average annual cost of all drugs was €4,211,819,844 (range: €3.93-4.46 billion), while the average
cost of GDs was €1,577,245,225 (range: €1.49-1.64 billion). The ratio of generics among drug costs
was highest in 2013 (37.8%) and lowest in 2014 (36.9%).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
In Turkey, GD prescription trends in primary care exhibits some fluctuations according to year,
gender, and age group. While GDs account for slightly more than half of all prescribed drugs and
approximately 37% of the cost. Cost share of GDs is noted to be higher than that reported in the
literature