Drug prescriptions in Danish out-of-hours primary care: a 1-yearpopulation-based study
Open accessAbstract
OBJECTIVE: General practitioners are the first point of contact in Danish out-of-hours (OOH) primary care. The large number of contacts implies that prescribing behaviour may have considerable impact on health-care expenditures and quality of care. The aim of this study was to examine the prevailing practices for medication prescription in Danish OOH with a particular focus on patient characteristics and contact type. DESIGN AND SETTING: A one-year population-based retrospective observational study was performed of all contacts to OOH primary care in the Central Denmark Region using registry data. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Prescriptions were categorised according to Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification (ATC) codes and stratified for patient age, gender and contact type (telephone consultation, clinic consultation or home visit). Prescription rates were calculated as number of prescriptions per 100 contacts. RESULTS: Of 644,777 contacts, 154,668 (24.0%) involved medication prescriptions; 21.9% of telephone consultations, 32.9% of clinic consultations and 14.3% of home visits. Around 53% of all drug prescriptions were made in telephone consultations. Anti-infective medications for systemic use accounted for 45.5% of all prescriptions and were the most frequently prescribed drug group for all contact types, although accounting for less than 1/3 of telephone prescriptions. Other frequently prescribed drugs were ophthalmological anti-infectives (10.5%), NSAIDs (6.4%), opioids (3.9%), adrenergic inhalants (3.0%) and antihistamines (2.3%). CONCLUSION: About 25% of all OOH contacts involved one or more medication prescriptions. The highest prescription rate was found for clinic consultations, but more than half of all prescriptions were made by telephone. KEY POINTS As the out-of-hours (OOH) primary care services cover more than 75% of all hours during a normal week, insight into the extent and type of OOH drug prescription is important. General practitioners (GPs) are responsible for more than 80% of all drug prescriptions in Denmark. Of all contacts 24.0% involved medication prescriptions; 21.9% of telephone consultations, 32.9% of clinic consultations and 14.3% of home visits. Of all prescriptions, 53% were made in telephone consultations. Anti-infective medications for systemic use accounted for 45.5% of all prescriptions, thereby being the most frequently prescribed drug group for all three contact types.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Only 2 included studies provided sample size justifications or power calculations.
“However, only 2 studies provided sample size justifications or power calculations [17,26].”
From Impact of Remote Consultations on Antibiotic Prescribing in Primary Health Care: Systematic Review (2020) · cites this paper as [17]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Cockburn, J., & Pit, S. (1997) · British medical journal · doi:10.1136/bmj.315.7107.520 · Cited by 589 · see citing works
General Practice and Primary Health Care in Denmark
Pedersen, K. M., Andersen, J. S., & Søndergaard, J. (2012) · The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine · doi:10.3122/jabfm.2012.02.110216 · Cited by 576 · see citing works
Bradley, C. (1992) · PubMed · Cited by 210 · see citing works
Out of hours service in Denmark: evaluation five years after reform
Christensen, M. B., & Olesen, F. (1998) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.316.7143.1502 · Cited by 147 · see citing works
Self-citationHuibers, L., Moth, G., Bondevik, G. T., Kersnik, J., Huber, C. A., Christensen, M. B., Leutgeb, R., Casado, A. M., Remmen, R., & Wensing, M. (2011) · BMC Family Practice · doi:10.1186/1471-2296-12-30 · Cited by 109 · see citing works
Self-citationOut of hours service: the Danish solution examined
Olesen, F., & Jolleys, J. V. (1994) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.309.6969.1624 · Cited by 85 · see citing works
Antibiotic prescribing patterns in out-of-hours primary care: A population-based descriptive study
Huibers, L., Moth, G., Christensen, M. B., & Vedsted, P. (2014) · Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care · doi:10.3109/02813432.2014.972067 · Cited by 43 · see citing works
Self-citationObservational study of a general practice out of hours cooperative: measures of activity
Salisbury, C. (1997) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.314.7075.182 · Cited by 43 · see citing works
Antibiotic Prescription in Febrile Children: A Cohort Study during Out-of-Hours Primary Care
Elshout, G., Kool, M., van der Wouden, J. C., Moll, H. A., Koes, B. W., & Berger, M. Y. (2012) · The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine · doi:10.3122/jabfm.2012.06.110310 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
Pressures on the general practitioner and decisions to prescribe
Weiss, M., Fitzpatrick, R. M., Scott, D., & Goldacre, M. (1996) · Family Practice · doi:10.1093/fampra/13.5.432 · Cited by 39 · see citing works
Consumption in out-of-hours health care: Danes double Dutch?
Huibers, L., Moth, G., Andersen, M. S., van Grunsven, P. M., Giesen, P. H. J., Christensen, M. B., & Olesen, F. (2014) · Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care · doi:10.3109/02813432.2014.898974 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
Self-citationRokstad, K., & Straand, J. (1997) · Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care · doi:10.3109/02813439709018496 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
[Drug prescription patterns in general practice. Extent, problems and possibilities of improvement].
Bjerrum, L., Larsen, J. T., & Søndergaard, J. (2002) · PubMed · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Patterns of prescribing in Irish general practitioners.
Jk, H. (1992) · PubMed · Cited by 6 · see citing works
[Danish drug consumption trends].
Madsen, H. K., & Hallas, J. (2009) · PubMed · Cited by 5 · see citing works
[General practitioners' evaluation of the out-of-hours service in Copenhagen County].
Christensen, M. B., Skafte-Holm, P., Weinicke, H. H., Greibe, J., Rem, J., Sauer, M., Andersen, D. H., & Gliese, M. S. (2005) · PubMed · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Self-citation[Drug prescription research in general practice. The Danish Society of General Medicine].
Søndergaard, J., Vedsted, P., Hansen, D. G., Rasmussen, H., Buusman, A., & Andersen, M. T. (2007) · PubMed · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Impact of Remote Consultations on Antibiotic Prescribing in Primary Health Care: Systematic Review
Han, S. M., Greenfield, G., Majeed, A., & Hayhoe, B. (2020) · Journal of Medical Internet Research · doi:10.2196/23482 · Cited by 80 · see citing works
Yuguero, O., Marsal, J. R., Esquerda, M., Galván, L., & Soler-González, J. (2019) · Primary Health Care Research & Development · doi:10.1017/s1463423619000793 · Cited by 24 · see citing works
Colliers, A., Adriaenssens, N., Anthierens, S., Bartholomeeusen, S., Philips, H., Remmen, R., & Coenen, S. (2019) · Antibiotics · doi:10.3390/antibiotics8020079 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
Colliers, A., Bombeke, K., Philips, H., Remmen, R., Coenen, S., & Anthierens, S. (2021) · Frontiers in Medicine · doi:10.3389/fmed.2021.735276 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Hek, K., Ramerman, L., Weesie, Y. M., Lambooij, A. C., Lambert, M., Heins, M. J., Hendriksen, J. M. T., Verheij, R. A., Cals, J., & van Dijk, L. (2022) · Antibiotics · doi:10.3390/antibiotics11030309 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
Uses of Virtual Care in Primary Care: Scoping Review
Agarwal, P., Fletcher, G. G., Ramamoorthi, K., Yao, X., & Bhattacharyya, O. K. (2024) · Journal of Medical Internet Research · doi:10.2196/55007 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
The dilemma of repeat weak opioid prescriptions – experiences from swedish GPs
Ekelin, E., & Hansson, A. (2018) · Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care · doi:10.1080/02813432.2018.1459241 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
A Scoping Review of After-Hours House Call Systems and Outcome in Different Countries
Morita, K., Inokuchi, R., Jin, X., & Tamiya, N. (2022) · An Official Journal of the Japan Primary Care Association · doi:10.14442/generalist.45.10
- Authors
- Christensen, M. B., Nørøxe, K. B., Moth, G., Vedsted, P., & Huibers, L.
- Affiliations
- Aarhus University (DK)
- Corresponding author
- Christensen, Morten Bondo
- Venue
- Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2016-10
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 453-458
- ISSN
- 0281-3432 (ISSN-L)
- 1502-7724
- PMC
- PMC5217277
- OpenAlex
- W2547730841
- Cited by
- 8
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2024: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 1.32
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Scopus (Elsevier) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion)
- Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Emergency Medicine › Emergency and Acute Care Studies
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Primary Care and Health Outcomes
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Geriatrics and Gerontology › Pharmaceutical Practices and Patient Outcomes
- Keywords
- out-of-hours primary care, drug prescribing, prescribing patterns, telephone consultation, home visits, prescription rates, general practitioners, health care expenditure, quality of care, patient characteristics, contact types, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, opioids, antihistamines
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Ambulatory Care, Child, Child, Preschool, Denmark, Pharmaceutical Preparations, Family Practice, Female, House Calls, Humans, Infant, Infant, Newborn, Male, Middle Aged, Drug Prescriptions, Primary Health Care, Retrospective Studies, Telephone, After-Hours Care, Young Adult, General Practitioners
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
