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 Original Articles |
| Actual Survey of Antibiotic Use |
| Chu Won Lee, Byung Il Choi |
| National Federation of Medical Insurance, Seoul, Korea |
Vol.22 Num.2 (p79~85)
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A survey shows that drugs contribute the highest proportion in all items of services provided by medical insurance and account for 30.6% of the total expenditure on treatment. Antibiotics take the first place in the pharmaceutical expenditures and represent 32.0% of total drug cost. The survey reveals it to be prescribed for 59.97% of the total patients. 76.6% of in-patients and 59.59% of out-patients had received antibiotics. The cost of antibiotics accounts for 47.74% of total drug cost in in-patients, and 24.8% in out-patients. Consequently the consumption of antibiotics is found to be comparatively greater in in-patients than in out-patients.
The consumption pattern shows significant difference among medical institutions. The percentage of patients receiveng antibiotics is 64.32% in clinics, but 50.43% in hospitals, 42.52% in general hospitals and 28.51% in university hospitals. This finding implies that the bigger the hospital facilities are, the lesser they use it. The antibiotic cost is 35.46% of total drug cost in hospitals, 33.42% in clinics, 32.98% in general hospital and 28.43% in university hospitals.
Oral antibiotics are prescribed for 45.66% and parenteral antibiotics for 46.51% of total patients. This suggests that the antibiotics are used more than the other drugs.
The cost of oral antibiotics account for 16.30% of total oral drug cost, and the cost of parenteral antibiotics account for 51.37% of total parenteral drug cost. 20.19% of total antibiotic cost are used in in-patients, and 79.81% in out-patients.
Antibiotic cost is expected to be about 272 billion Won out of the total drug cost amounting to 850 billion Won in 1990.
These findings on antibiotic consumption have particular significance for health care services on an efficient prescription and reasonable control of the use. Therefore, antibiotics should be much concerned to both the medical institutions and the national federation of insurer by attempts to conduct actual survey continuously and execute a training programme for medical personnel on guidelines for the use of antibiotics in times of medical insurance under which the whole population is covered.
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