Researchers at The University of British Columbia’s Centre for Health Services and Policy Research (CHSPR) have released the most comprehensive study of drug spending in Canada to date. The Canadian Rx Atlas (2nd Edition) is the first ever that measures spending on prescription drugs by province, therapeutic category, and age of patient.
“The results show major differences in the use and cost of medicines across Canada,” says Steve Morgan, associate director in UBC’s CHSPR. “Across provinces spending differs by more than 50 per cent. The most striking finding however, is that none of the conventional beliefs about drug spending appear to be true.”
The study reveals that spending is not due to differences in population age, provincial drug plan formularies, population health status, or health system characteristics.
According to Morgan, many variations in the amount of medicines used and the type of medicines prescribed are driven by non-medical causes including differences in the expectations of patients and prescribing habits of physicians.
Key Findings
- In 2007, Canadians spent $578 per capita on retail purchases of prescription drugs, approximately $19 billion in total.
- On average, spending on prescriptions for Canadians age 65 and older was more than twice that of Canadians aged 45–64 and over six times that of Canadians aged 20–44.
- After figures were adjusted for differences in population age, spending per capita varied by over 55% across provinces, from $418 in British Columbia to $655 in Quebec.
- Differences in the number of drugs covered by provincial drug plans do not appear to explain inter-provincial variations in prescription drug spending.
- Population characteristics such as socioeconomics, health status, and health system do not point to clear explanations of inter-provincial variations in age-standardized spending.
UBC researchers combined unique databases from IMS Health Canada, an international health industry information company, with other sources of information about provincial populations and health systems. The report is now available at www.chspr.ubc.ca.
“The findings of the Canadian Rx Atlas underscore the importance of efforts to build better data systems for monitoring pharmaceutical utilization, expenditures, and health outcomes,” says Morgan. “Our Atlas shows that for several age groups and drug classes, residents in some provinces use 50 per cent more medicines than residents of other provinces. It is long overdue that we study these patterns to determine whether this reflects over use of medicines in some provinces or underuse in others.”
This second edition of the Canadian Rx Atlas features 168 full-colour maps detailing drug spending levels and causes in the provinces, 20 maps illustrating population health and health systems in the provinces, and 42 illustrations of average drug spending per person within major age groups.
“Our new Atlas gives policy makers, researchers and the public unparalleled information about factors that drive spending on prescription drugs,” says Steve Morgan.
The UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research stimulates scientific enquiry into population health and into ways in which health services can best be organized, funded and delivered.
IMS Health provided data for the study. It operates in more than 100 countries and is the world’s leading provider of information solutions to the pharmaceutical and health-care industries.
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