reports

Pharmaceutical use in Manitoba: opportunities to optimize use

Winnipeg, MB, Canada: Manitoba Centre for Health Policy.

Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

This report provides a snapshot of prescribing across several categories of medications for all Manitobans over an 11–year period (1997/98–2008/09). It describes a population–based profile of utilization for antipsychotics and benzodiazepines and the related medications in older adults, medications and glucose test strips for diabetes mellitus, inhalers for asthma and chronic obstructive lung disease, and biologic agents to treat rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, ankylosing spondylitis, and psoriasis. The report assesses a range of influences on medication utilization, such as patient sociodemographic factors and prescriber characteristics. Some literature suggests that, for a variety of reasons, these groups of medications are not always prescribed optimally. The report evaluates the impact of patient and prescriber characteristics on measures of optimal medication use based on recent literature and guidelines including: the use of inhaled or oral corticosteroids prior to the use of inhaled long acting beta agonists (LABA) for asthma, the use of LABA with concomitant inhaled or oral corticosteroids, avoiding the use of high dose second generation antipsychotics (SGAs)in older adults, and reserving higher cost new medications for diabetes mellitus as second line therapy.