Drug Expenditure Control And Containment

Objective: To know about the condition of drug expenditure increase and drug expenditure controlling measures in China and other developed countries, and explore possible controlling measures to check fast drug expenditure increase in our country.Methods: Collect, compare and analyze the date of drug expenditure and drug expenditure containment policies both of China and of foreign countries.Results: Through analysis, it is found that drug expenditure increased faster than economic development of the same period. From 1991-1999, total drug expenditure increased on average by 18.83% annually, drug expenditure per capita increased by 17.88%; drug expenditure took up a disproportionate large part of the total health cost, the rate of drug deduction of hospitals is high, the proportion of drug expenditure in total medical cost is unreasonable. From 1998-2004, statistics conducted by public health departments about income from drugs in proportion to total business income in hospitals at different levels had a slight decrease from 52.10% to 46.02%, the balance of drug cost and benefit increased on average by 19.25% annually, the rate of drug deduction increased from 16.64% to 31.68% annually; in 2001, drug expenditure to total health cost is 44.4%, much higher than 10-20% of developed countries, with drug expenditure per capita being greatly lower than that of developed countries. These problems are mainly caused by imperfect drug expenditure containment mechanisms such as drug price, hospital drug cost control and drug usage. Though the existing drug expenditure containment measures in China has had a certain effect, when compared with foreign ones, are not so systematic and comprehensive.Conclusions: Proper drug price is the basis of drug expenditure containment; weakening the relationship between income from drug and compensation to hospital and severing the direct link between drug expenditure and doctors' income is the key to controlling unreasonable increase of drug expenditure; clinic appropriate usage of drugs is the ultimate goal of drug expenditure containment. Simple drug expenditure containment measures can't achieve the goal of controlling the unreasonable increase of drug expenditure, while systematic, comprehensive ones can.