Specific therapeutic group age-sex related prescribing units (STAR-PUs): weightings for analysing general practices' prescribing in England.

OBJECTIVES

To derive cost comparators for prescribing by English general practitioners in eight specific therapeutic groups, based on age-sex related weightings, and to confirm, from a new dataset, earlier age-sex weightings for overall prescribing (ASTRO-PUs).

DESIGN

Calculations based on one year's prescribing data from selected practices using AAH Meditel software, held on MediPlus by Intercontinental Medical Statistics (IMS, UK and Ireland), and research practices using VAMP software, held on the General Practice Research Database.

SETTING

112 English practices with 739,672 patients and 510 British practices with 3,126,570 patients.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Cost based weightings for 18 age-sex groups and for temporary residents for eight leading specific therapeutic groups and for prescribing overall.

RESULTS

The two datasets were similar in age distribution and in the way that prescription numbers were distributed by age-sex band in each therapeutic group. The cost based weightings for specific therapeutic groups showed great variation in the use of these groups for patients in different age-sex groups. When these weightings were applied to the prescribing of practices in two family health services authorities they differed in their power to predict prescribing costs: for cardiovascular and gastrointestinal drugs predictive power was particularly high; for drugs for infections it was particularly low, since these are widely used at all ages and for both sexes. Cost based weightings for overall prescribing derived from the IMS data were similar to those of the ASTRO-PU system even though they were derived by different methods from different datasets.

CONCLUSIONS

The weightings (STAR-PUs) offer a sound basis for cost comparisons at the therapeutic group level. Cost-based weightings for overall prescribing derived from the IMS data were reassuringly similar to those of the existing ASTRO-PU system.