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Drugs prescribed by general practitioners according to age, gender and socioeconomic status after adjustment for multimorbidity level

BACKGROUND: Age, gender and socioeconomic status have been shown to be associated with the use of prescription drugs, even after adjustment for multimorbidity. General practitioners have a holistic and patient-centred perspective and our hypothesis is that this may reflect on the prescription of dru...

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Autores principales: Skoog, Jessica, Midlöv, Patrik, Beckman, Anders, Sundquist, Jan, Halling, Anders
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4246463/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25421269
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-014-0183-8
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author Skoog, Jessica
Midlöv, Patrik
Beckman, Anders
Sundquist, Jan
Halling, Anders
author_facet Skoog, Jessica
Midlöv, Patrik
Beckman, Anders
Sundquist, Jan
Halling, Anders
author_sort Skoog, Jessica
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Age, gender and socioeconomic status have been shown to be associated with the use of prescription drugs, even after adjustment for multimorbidity. General practitioners have a holistic and patient-centred perspective and our hypothesis is that this may reflect on the prescription of drugs. In Sweden the patient may seek secondary care without a letter of referral and the liability of the prescription of drugs accompanies the patient, which makes it suitable for this type of research. In this study we examine the odds of having prescription drug use in the population and the rates of prescription drugs among patients, issued in primary health care, according to age, gender and socioeconomic status after adjustment for multimorbidity level. METHOD: Data were collected on all individuals above 20 years of age in Östergötland county with about 400 000 inhabitants in year 2006. The John Hopkins ACG Case-mix was used as a proxy for multimorbidity level. Odds ratio (OR) of having prescription drugs issued in primary health care in the population and rates of prescription drug use among patients in primary health care, stated as incidence rate ratio (IRR), according to age, gender and socioeconomic status were calculated and adjusted for multimorbidity. RESULTS: After adjustment for multimorbidity, individuals 80 years or older had higher odds ratio (OR 3.37 (CI 95% 3.22-3.52)) and incidence rate ratio (IRR 6.24 (CI 95% 5.79-6.72)) for prescription drug use. Male individuals had a lower odds ratio of having prescription drugs (OR 0.66 (CI 95% 0.64-0.69)), but among patients males had a slightly higher incidence rate of drug use (IRR 1.06 (CI 95% 1.04-1.09)). Individuals with the highest income had the lowest odds ratio of having prescription drugs and individuals with the second lowest income had the highest odds ratio of having prescription drugs (OR 1.10 (CI 95% 1.07-1.13)). Individuals with the highest education had the lowest odds ratio of having prescription drugs (OR 0.61 (CI 95% 0.54-0.67)). CONCLUSION: Age, gender and socioeconomic status are associated with large differences in the use of prescribed drugs in primary health care, even after adjustment for multimorbidity level. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12875-014-0183-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-42464632014-11-29 Drugs prescribed by general practitioners according to age, gender and socioeconomic status after adjustment for multimorbidity level Skoog, Jessica Midlöv, Patrik Beckman, Anders Sundquist, Jan Halling, Anders BMC Fam Pract Research Article BACKGROUND: Age, gender and socioeconomic status have been shown to be associated with the use of prescription drugs, even after adjustment for multimorbidity. General practitioners have a holistic and patient-centred perspective and our hypothesis is that this may reflect on the prescription of drugs. In Sweden the patient may seek secondary care without a letter of referral and the liability of the prescription of drugs accompanies the patient, which makes it suitable for this type of research. In this study we examine the odds of having prescription drug use in the population and the rates of prescription drugs among patients, issued in primary health care, according to age, gender and socioeconomic status after adjustment for multimorbidity level. METHOD: Data were collected on all individuals above 20 years of age in Östergötland county with about 400 000 inhabitants in year 2006. The John Hopkins ACG Case-mix was used as a proxy for multimorbidity level. Odds ratio (OR) of having prescription drugs issued in primary health care in the population and rates of prescription drug use among patients in primary health care, stated as incidence rate ratio (IRR), according to age, gender and socioeconomic status were calculated and adjusted for multimorbidity. RESULTS: After adjustment for multimorbidity, individuals 80 years or older had higher odds ratio (OR 3.37 (CI 95% 3.22-3.52)) and incidence rate ratio (IRR 6.24 (CI 95% 5.79-6.72)) for prescription drug use. Male individuals had a lower odds ratio of having prescription drugs (OR 0.66 (CI 95% 0.64-0.69)), but among patients males had a slightly higher incidence rate of drug use (IRR 1.06 (CI 95% 1.04-1.09)). Individuals with the highest income had the lowest odds ratio of having prescription drugs and individuals with the second lowest income had the highest odds ratio of having prescription drugs (OR 1.10 (CI 95% 1.07-1.13)). Individuals with the highest education had the lowest odds ratio of having prescription drugs (OR 0.61 (CI 95% 0.54-0.67)). CONCLUSION: Age, gender and socioeconomic status are associated with large differences in the use of prescribed drugs in primary health care, even after adjustment for multimorbidity level. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12875-014-0183-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2014-11-25 /pmc/articles/PMC4246463/ /pubmed/25421269 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-014-0183-8 Text en © Skoog et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Skoog, Jessica
Midlöv, Patrik
Beckman, Anders
Sundquist, Jan
Halling, Anders
Drugs prescribed by general practitioners according to age, gender and socioeconomic status after adjustment for multimorbidity level
title Drugs prescribed by general practitioners according to age, gender and socioeconomic status after adjustment for multimorbidity level
title_full Drugs prescribed by general practitioners according to age, gender and socioeconomic status after adjustment for multimorbidity level
title_fullStr Drugs prescribed by general practitioners according to age, gender and socioeconomic status after adjustment for multimorbidity level
title_full_unstemmed Drugs prescribed by general practitioners according to age, gender and socioeconomic status after adjustment for multimorbidity level
title_short Drugs prescribed by general practitioners according to age, gender and socioeconomic status after adjustment for multimorbidity level
title_sort drugs prescribed by general practitioners according to age, gender and socioeconomic status after adjustment for multimorbidity level
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4246463/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25421269
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-014-0183-8
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