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Therapeutic traditions, patient socioeconomic characteristics and physicians’ early new drug prescribing–a multilevel analysis of rosuvastatin prescription in south Sweden

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Abstract

Purpose

To investigate the role that both patient and outpatient factors related to health care practice (HCP) play in physicians’ early adoption of rosuvastatin.

Materials and methods

Generalized estimation equations (GEEs) and alternating logistic regression (ALR) with pair-wise odds ratios (PWORs) were used to measure similarities in rosuvastatin prescription within HCPs for all individuals with statin prescriptions in Skåne region, Sweden.

Results

After 12 months, 53% of the HCPs had adopted the new statin. Rosuvastatin prescriptions co-occured within certain HCPs 3.56 times more often than one would have expected based on a random distribution. Private HCPs had four times higher probability of prescribing rosuvastatin than public HCPs.

Conclusion

Contextual characteristics of the HCP seem to be relevant for understanding physicians’ motivation to adopt rosuvastatin. Moreover, our study reveals inequity in health care as the socioeconomic status of the patients appears to influence the prescribing behavior of the physicians irrespective of medical reasons.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Epidemiology, Department of Clinical Sciences in Malmö, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden

    Henrik Ohlsson, Basile Chaix & Juan Merlo

  2. Department of Social Medicine, Skåne Region, Malmö, Sweden

    Henrik Ohlsson & Juan Merlo

  3. UMR-S 707 Inserm, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6, Faculté de Médecine, Paris, France

    Basile Chaix

  4. Social Epidemiology, Department of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, 205 02, Malmö, Sweden

    Henrik Ohlsson

Authors
  1. Henrik Ohlsson
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  2. Basile Chaix
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  3. Juan Merlo
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Correspondence to Henrik Ohlsson.

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Ohlsson, H., Chaix, B. & Merlo, J. Therapeutic traditions, patient socioeconomic characteristics and physicians’ early new drug prescribing–a multilevel analysis of rosuvastatin prescription in south Sweden. Eur J Clin Pharmacol 65, 141–150 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00228-008-0569-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00228-008-0569-4

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