Prescriber variation in potentially inappropriate prescribing in older populations in Ireland.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Health care policy-makers look for prescribing indicators at the population level to evaluate the performance of prescribers, improve quality and control drug costs. The aim of this research was to; (i) estimate the level of variation in potentially inappropriate prescribing (PIP) across prescribers in the national Irish older population using the STOPP criteria; (ii) estimate how reliably the criteria could distinguish between prescribers in terms of their proportion of PIP and; (iii) examine how PIP varies between prescribers and by patient and prescriber characteristics in a multilevel regression model.

Methods

1,938 general practitioners (GPs) with 338,375 registered patients' ≥70 years were extracted from the Health Service Executive Primary Care Reimbursemen

SUBMITTER: Cahir C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4021047 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature