Background One of the prescribing quality indicators (PQI) set by the program contract for specialised care (SC) in our sector is the prescription by active substance (AS) instead of prescribing by brand name.

Purpose To improve the quality and efficiency of the outpatient prescription in specialised care by reporting back and offering training sessions to prescribing physicians.

Materials and methods

• ▶ Throughout 2010 an analysis of the Clinical Services with higher rates of outpatient prescriptions was performed and a delivery calendar of individualised reports for each physician was planned. These reports contained information about the outpatient prescribing profile.

• ▶ The Pharmacy Service held informative sessions on the rational use of medicines (RUM) for the Clinical Services. The number of prescriptions written by AS was compared to 2009.

Results Three groups were established after analysing the number of outpatient prescriptions. Group A (71.0% of prescriptions) received 4 reports, group B 21.5% received 3 reports and group C 7.5% received one. During 2010, 1,410 reports were delivered and ten RUM sessions were held. During 2010 the prescriptions by AS for SC were 14.7% compared to 11.8% in 2009. The change in PQI by AS from 2009 to 2010 in Clinical Services with double intervention was: emergency (from 28.1% to 27.4%), cardiology (from 8.3% to 11.3%), gastroenterology (9.8% to 14.2%), endocrine (from 9.9% to 24.5%), internal medicine (from 14.0% to 20.3%), nephrology (from 5.9% to 9.3%), neurology (from 7.6% to 10.0%), pneumology (from 7.1% to 16.0%), obstetrics and gynaecology (from 7.9% to 9.1%) and traumatology (from 7.6% to 10.0%).

Conclusions

• ▶ The regular presentation of prescription profile reports to physicians resulted in an improvement of 2.9 points of PQI by active substance during 2010 in our sector.

• ▶ The regular presentation of prescription profile reports along with the RUM sessions produced an improvement on the PQI by active substance in the 9 hospital departments.