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Analysis of Cost and Content of 1326 Medical Prescriptions from the Area of Mount Lebanon

Georges Choueiry, Souheil Hallit, Pascale Salameh

Objective: To describe the market share of importers, manufacturers and countries of origin of prescribed drugs in Lebanon; and to examine the effects of the price reductions enforced by the ministry of health on highly prescribed drugs.

Methods: 1326 medical prescriptions were collected from 3 different pharmacies in Mount Lebanon during the period July 2015 and February 2017. Costs were analyzed using 16 lists of drug prices from November 2014 to March 2017 provided by the ministry of public health. We also included the composition and therapeutic class of each medication. We used a one-tailed Z-test in order to check the validity of the claim that the reduction in prices enforced by the ministry of health affected highly prescribed drugs more than others on the total population of drugs prescribed.

Results: Out of 4265 drugs in our prescriptions, 19.5% were manufactured in Lebanon and 61.9% imported from European countries whose manufacturers dominated the top 10 manufacturers count. Mersaco topped the importers list July with 18.9% market share followed by Phenicia (10.8%). The most commonly prescribed drug classes in the sample were anti-infectives (24% of all drugs), followed by pain and inflammation agents (17.6%).

The mean drop in prices between November 2, 2014 and March 21, 2017 is larger for highly prescribed drugs than for others (p-value<0.00001), with a 99.8% confidence interval of (17.6%, 19.3%).

Conclusion: The cost of medication decreased in the last 2.5 years, however we still need to investigate the effects of this change on community pharmacists and the patients.