| title: | Access to drugs and use of health care services in result of drug reimbursement reform |
|---|---|
| reg no: | ETF5458 |
| project type: | Estonian Science Foundation research grant |
| subject: |
3. Medical Sciences |
| status: | completed |
| institution: | TU Faculty of Medicine |
| head of project: | Raul-Allan Kiivet |
| duration: | 01.01.2003 - 31.12.2004 |
| description: | The development of medical sciences creates new possibilities for diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Research and development of new medicines is an extremely rapidly growing branch of medical science. The consumption of prescription medicines in volume terms (i.e. daily doses) has increased almost twofold during the last 5-6 years in Estonia. The Estonian Health Insurance Fund has paid four times more for the reimbursement of prescription medicines.The new Health Insurance Law will allow to cut the expenditure on prescription drugs by two strategies. Firstly, agreements with manufacturers on fixed medicinal products? prices (price negotiations) and secondly, application of reference prices will reduce the overall price level of medicinal products? and can create savings both for Health Insurance and for the patients. Cost containment measures in the reimbursement system, in a perfect world, should not have negative influence on the health of people or should not increase health care costs. For that, the following questions will be studied: - - to what extent and among which medicines, the switch to low-price alternative medication will occur; -how does the discontinuation of drug treatment influence the health of patients ?in which patients and how will the of other health care services increase, especially the use of hospital and emergency care. Data on drug consumption ?before? and ?after?, i.e data for the years 2002 and 2003, introduction of reference price system will be obtained from the Health Insurance Fund. As the dataset is extremely large, only high-prevalence diseases with chronic drug treatment will be selected ? asthma, schizophrenia, ischemic heart disease, heart failure, rheumatic diseases. On the basis of this project it can be evaluated, whether the savings in the drug reimbursement have increased the possibilities to use more medication or other health care services, or instead, whether the decrease of drug consumption has caused an increase in utilization of other health care services. The significance of the project to the health care in Estonia is to evaluate the reform outcomes and to identify vulnerable groups of patients, whose health condition or treatment was negatively influenced by the reform. |
| project group | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| no | name | institution | position | |
| 1. | Raul-Allan Kiivet | TU Faculty of Medicine | Professor, University of Tartu | |
| 2. | Liis Nirk | Department of Public Health | researcher | |
| 3. | Ly Rootslane | Department of Pharmacy | PhD student | |