Predicting prescribing costs: A model of northern Ireland general practices

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Abstract
Prescription costs are large and rising yet previous studies attempting to explain the variation in them have not been very successful.We analysed the prescribing costs for all GPs in Northern Ireland for the month of November 1990.Using a simple linear regression model we can explain 91.9% of the total variation in Northern Ireland GPs' monthly prescribing costs using only the two variables of the number of children aged under 5 and the number of elderly aged 60 years and over on a GP's list, all other age‐groups did not add anything substantial to the model or explained variation in costs. Inclusion of ‘deprived patients’ (as measured by the Jarman Index) adds only £0.15 per patient to a GPs monthly prescribing cost total.The model requires further testing but has a large potential for GP audit and peer review in the area of prescribing costs.