Dose dispensing in the primary health sector - the last 6 months of 2006

During the last 6 months of 2006, approximately 35,000 people had their medicinal products dose dispensed. Elderly women constitute the main part of this group. The consumption of dose dispensed medicinal products amounts to 2.0 per cent of the total consumption of medicinal products during the last 6 months of 2006.

On 1 October 2001 , a new executive order entered into force which allowed patients to have their medicinal products dose dispensed at a pharmacy by means of mechanical dose dispensing. Until then, it had only been possible to offer manual dose dispensing. In connection with the new executive order, pharmacies are obligated to report their sales of dose dispensed medicinal products to the Danish Medicines Agency’ Register of Medicinal Product Statistics and clearly indicate when a medicinal product is sold in dose dispensed form. This makes it possible to monitor the use of dose dispensing in detail. In this note, the use of dose dispensing in the primary health sector is described for the period from the first 6 months of 2003 to the last 6 months of 2006. As of 1 January 2006 , a total of 10 pharmacies offered mechanical dose dispensing.

Number of people and weekly packages

Table 1 shows the number of weekly packages distributed into periods of 6 months. Under special circumstances, pharmacies may dispense products for more than 2 weeks at the time, but newer for more than 4 weeks. The number of people who used dose dispensed medicinal products during the last 6 months of 2006 was approximately 34,517 (table 1). The number of weekly packages during the last 6 months of 2005 was approximately 778,307. Almost all dose dispensing is carried out according to doctor’s orders.

Table 1. Number of people and number of weekly packages during periods of 6 months. Dose dispensed medicinal products.

Figure 1 shows the distribution of sex and age of people who have received dose dispensed medicinal products during the last 6 months of 2006. It appears that for people 70 years or older, women constitute the vast majority.

Figure 1. Number of people who have used dose dispensed medicinal products during the last 6 months of 2006.

Quantity consumption and turnover

Table 2 shows quantity consumption and turnover of dose dispensed medicinal products divided into periods of 6 months.

The distribution of dose dispensing is still limited. During the last 6 months of 2006, the sale of dose dispensed medicinal products amounted to 29.3 million DDD which equals 2.0 per cent of the total sale of medicinal products in the primary health sector during the same period.

Table 2. Quantity consumption (DDD), turnover (calculated by means of pharmacy selling price (exclusive of fees)) and expenses for fees. Dose dispensed medicinal products.

Contents of the weekly packages

The average number of different medicinal products contained in the weekly packages has decreased from 6 different medicinal products during the first 6 months of 2006 to 5 different medicinal products during the last 6 months of 2006.

The table below shows the median number of different medicinal products (25% - 75% quartiles) for each period.

Table 3. Number of different medicinal products in each weekly package. Dose dispensed medicinal products.

Figure 2. Distribution of number of medicinal products in each weekly package.

In all periods, the primary contents of the packages were medicinal products for the nervous system (around 37 per cent) and medicinal products for the heart and circulation (around 28 per cent). Thus, the remaining medicinal products constituted approximately 35 per cent.

For further information, please contact Statistics & Analysis, lokstat@dkma.dk.