Background While verifying the dosage and pharmaceutical form, the pharmacist also has to check the correct compilation of the prescription. Dispensing the first cycle of therapy at discharge, the hospital pharmacist should always verify whether the physician has correctly completed all fields of the prescription. Agenzia Italiana FArmaco (AIFA) developed a tool to simplify this process: a set of’ ‘notes’, initially conceived as an instrument for government expenditure on pharmaceuticals that is now a means of ensuring the pertinent use of drugs.

Purpose To evaluate both the characteristics of the population to whom the prescription is addressed and the respective prescription, paying attention to errors/gap in AIFA notes. We also evaluated the number of prescriptions containing drugs out of the hospital formulary (FN) and drugs not reimbursed by the National Health Service (C drugs).

Material and methods This retrospective study was performed to evaluate discharge prescriptions from 1 January 2014 to 30 June 2014 to obtain data about the patient (sex, age) and the use of AIFA note methodology. The evaluated units were cardiology, rehabilitation, neurology and medicine.

Results Our pharmacists dispensed about 90 active principles and the drugs distributed most frequently were enoxaparine (15%), pantoprazole (11%) and ramipril (7%). We analysed 833 prescriptions, 471 for men and 362 for women. The average age obtained from the prescription was 72.50 years (70.65 for men, 74.35 for women). 349 prescriptions (41.90%) contained active ingredients that do not need AIFA notes and 373 contained the right notes. The prescriptions with incorrect or incomplete notes were 110, respectively, 11.64% (97) and 1.56% (13). The most frequently incorrect notes concerned proton pump inhibitors (note 1 and 48, 53.61%) and cholesterol lowering drugs (note 13, 11.34%). 130 prescriptions contained FN drugs (15.61%), of which 53 (40.77%) were C drugs.

Conclusion This analysis shows how physicians’ prescribing could be improved; 13.20% of prescriptions had wrong or incomplete notes. The study also underlines an increase in the number of prescriptions containing C drugs, highlighting the need for better information about the formulary to physicians.

References and/or Acknowledgements

1. Legge 16 November 2001, p. 405

2. http://www.agenziafarmaco.gov.it/it/content/note-aifa

References and/or AcknowledgementsNo conflict of interest.