OBJECTIVES:

Even though cardiovascular mortality decreased over the last decades, their prevalence has paradoxically increased. Therefore analyses of cardiovascular drug utilization have great importance and impact on health policies. Slovakia has reached the highest consumption of lipid-lowering drugs among all OECD countries since 2013. Defined Daily Dose (DDD) is the internationally recognized unit for reporting of drug utilization. Additionally, in Slovakia also the Standard Drug Dose (SDD) is used. In this study we analysed drug utilization data from two different sources.

METHODS:

We have analysed the utilization of lipid-lowering drugs in Slovakia between 2010-2015 using: 1) data provided by drug distributors to the State Institute for Drug Control (SIDC) which are annually submitted by the company MCR to the OECD database; 2) data provided by the pharmaceutical care providers and insurance companies to the National Health Information Centre (NHIC).

RESULTS:

Analysis of the NHIC’s data revealed considerable discrepancies when compared to MCR’s data. MCR reports an average consumption of lipid-lowering drugs of 138.5 DID (min.: 113.8 DID; max.: 152.9 DID), whereas according to NHIC it has reached only 87.8 DID (min.: 83.9 DID; max.: 91.2 DID). The differences range from 67.6% to 35.7%. Furthermore, MCR data indicate a substantial increase of 33.6% in the consumption of lipid-lowering drugs during this five-year-period. In comparison, data from NHIC show only a small increase of 3.8%. We have identified two potential reasons for the differences: 1) MCR data might be collected in SDD and reported further to OECD in DDD without conversion; 2) since MCR is collecting data reported by the distributors, further re-distribution might inflate the real drug consumption.

CONCLUSIONS:

The source of drug consumption data is crucial in delivering accurate drug utilization analyses. Therefore, close attention should be paid to the data used for national and international drug utilization analyses.