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Prescription Costs Rise More than 6 Times When Patients Reach 65 |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Prescribing costs increase dramatically when people reach 65, according to a detailed analysis of more than five million patients published in the March issue of the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. When the researchers looked at the average number of drugs that patients were prescribed, people over 75 had almost eight times as many prescriptions as children under four years of age. Being able to predict prescribing costs is very important, he adds, especially when there are so many demands and pressures on healthcare budgets. "We looked at prescribing by gender, breaking down patients into ten age categories and analysing their use of 15 different categories of drugs" he says. The only categories not to reach 100 per cent prescribing rates over the age of 54 were men aged 55 to 64 (85 per cent) and men who were 85 years plus (91 per cent). "Our study underlines the significantly higher costs of prescribing to older patients and this information is vital at a time when we face a progressively ageing population" concludes co-author Eladio Fernandez-Liz of the Institut Catala de la Salut, who analysed the data. "It also provides a detailed breakdown of the drugs most commonly prescribed in ten age groups and by gender. The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology is published monthly on behalf of the British Pharmacological Society by Wiley-Blackwell. It contains papers and reports on all aspects of drug action in humans, bridging the gap between the medical profession, clinical research and the pharmaceutical industry.
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