Pharmacoeconomics of Antibiotic Therapy
During the past few years new drugs with greatly improved efficacy have become available to physicians and their patients. The higher purchase price of these new drugs is quite important and is quoted as a significant cause of the escalating cost of health care. Antibiotics have played a highly visi...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Wiley
1994-01-01
|
| Series: | Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/1994/960960 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | During the past few years new drugs with greatly improved efficacy have become available to physicians
and their patients. The higher purchase price of these new drugs is quite important and is quoted as a
significant cause of the escalating cost of health care. Antibiotics have played a highly visible role in this
therapeutic scene and account for $1.2 billion of the yearly national pharmaceutical budget in the United
States. From an economic point of view, costs arise because resources are limited and have alternative
uses. The real cost of prescribing a new, more expensive drug, may be that other drugs and/or services
become unavailable. Unsurprisingly, considering the magnitude of the slakes, we have seen the recent
development and expansion of subsets of the field of health economics. Of these, cost of illness studies and
pharmacoeconomics have played a prominent role. The ultimate objective of these relatively new tools is
to help clinicians and decision makers in selling priori lies. A pharmacoeconomic study can have different
perspectives. Cost and benefits can be calculated with respect to the patients', society's, the payers, or the
health care providers, point of view. The perspective chosen for a study determines what is counted as cost
or benefit; therefore, the economic impact of an intervention may be quite different depending on the
perspective taken. Pharmacoeconomics is particularly relevant to antibiotic therapy since it can demonstrate
that the price of acquisition of the drug plays a relatively modest part in the global pharmacoeconomic
aspect of tl1c treatment of bacterial infections. This is easily understood when it is realized that failure to
treat a bacterial infection due to an inadequate choice of antibiotic promptly can result in avoidable
hospitalization, prolongation of hospitalization, permanent disability and even death. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1180-2332 |