Trial reportThe British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners1999
Controlled trial of pharmacist intervention in general practice: the effect on prescribing costs.
Trial report in The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 1999. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Effect of outpatient pharmacists' non-dispensing roles on patient outcomes and prescribing patterns.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2010Pooled it
- Treatment reviews of older people on polypharmacy in primary care: cluster controlled trial comparing two approaches.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2007Trial
- Pharmacy professionals' perceptions of educational supervision in primary care through the lens of Proctor's model.BMC medical education · 2023Article
- Data-Driven Identification of Unusual Prescribing Behavior: Analysis and Use of an Interactive Data Tool Using 6 Months of Primary Care Data From 6500 Practices in England.JMIR medical informatics · 2023Article
- Educational supervision to support pharmacy professionals' learning and practice of advanced roles.International journal of clinical pharmacy · 2022Article
- Patients' experiences of pharmacists in general practice: an exploratory qualitative study.BMC family practice · 2021Article
- Community pharmacy teams' experiences of general practice-based pharmacists: an exploratory qualitative study.BMC health services research · 2020Article
- Completed audit cycle to explore the use of the STOPP/START toolkit to optimise medication in psychiatric in-patients with dementia.BJPsych bulletin · 2018Article
- Physician centric healthcare: is it time for a paradigm shift?Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine · 2017Article
- Professional training and roles of community pharmacists in malaysia: views from general medical practitioners.Malaysian family physician : the official journal of the Academy of Family Physicians of Malaysia · 2009Article
- Review
- Changing relationships: attitudes and opinions of general practitioners and pharmacists regarding the role of the community pharmacist.Pharmacy world & science : PWS · 2003Article
- Attitudes and behaviour of general practitioners and their prescribing costs: a national cross sectional survey.Quality & safety in health care · 2003Article
- Safer medicines management in primary care.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2002Article
- Exploring factors associated with patients' satisfaction with medication change: a questionnaire survey.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2002Article
- The impact of a general practice group intervention on prescribing costs and patterns.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2002Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIt has been suggested that the employment of pharmacists in general practice might moderate the growth in prescribing costs. However, empirical evidence for this proposition has been lacking. We report the results of a controlled trial of pharmacist intervention in United Kingdom general practice.
aimTo determine whether intervention practices made savings relative to controls.
methodAn evaluation of an initiative set up by Doncaster Health Authority. Eight practices agreed to take part and received intensive input from five pharmacists for one year (September 1996 to August 1997) at a cost of 163,000 Pounds. Changes in prescribing patterns were investigated by comparing these practices with eight individually matched controls for both the year of the intervention and the previous year. Prescribing data (PACTLINE) were used to assess these changes. The measures used to take account of differences in the populations of the practices included the ASTRO-PU for overall prescribing and the STAR-PU for prescribing in specific therapeutic areas. Differences between intervention and control practices were subjected to Wilcoxon matched-pairs, signed-ranks tests.
resultsThe median (minimum to maximum) rise in prescribing costs per ASTRO-PU was 0.85 Pound (-1.95 Pounds to 2.05 Pounds) in the intervention practices compared with 2.55 Pounds (1.74 Pounds to 4.65 Pounds) in controls (P = 0.025). Had the cost growth of the intervention group been as high as that of the controls, their total prescribing expenditure would have been around 347,000 Pounds higher.
conclusionThis study suggests that the use of pharmacists did control prescribing expenditure sufficiently to offset their employment costs.
Indexed as
Identifiers
10756613PMC1313499What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.