To study the appropriateness of phlebotomy for digoxin therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) in outpatients, we conducted a retrospective chart review, a computer search of all previous TDM testing, and a questionnaire of all outpatients (n = 86) who had serum digoxin determinations between April 10 and April 28, 1992 (585 tests). In patients who took digoxin at the same time daily (40 patients, 30...

The prodrug concept has been used to improve undesirable properties of drugs since the late 19th century, although it was only at the end of the 1950s that the actual term prodrug was introduced for the first time. Prodrugs are inactive, bioreversible derivatives of active drug molecules that must undergo an enzymatic and/or chemical transformation in vivo to release the active parent drug, whi...

OBJECTIVE 1) To evaluate the participation rate and identify the practical barriers to implementing a community pharmacist-led medication review service in francophone Switzerland and, 2) To assess the effectiveness of external support. METHODS A qualitative survey was undertaken to identify barriers to patient inclusion and medication review delivery in daily practice among all contactable i...

BACKGROUND A global budgeting system helps control the growth of healthcare spending by setting expenditure ceilings. However, the hospital global budget implemented in Taiwan in 2002 included a special provision: drug expenditures are reimbursed at face value, while other expenditures are subject to discounting. That gives hospitals, particularly those that are for-profit, an incentive to incr...

from many other writings on the subject, is its discussion of the problem of evaluating MT systems. The proposed methodology is decomposed into three distinct areas: (i) evaluation by the system's designer; (ii) cost/benefit evaluation by the user; and (iii) linguistic evaluation by the user. This delineation serves as the framework for a more detailed and impressive, though by no means final, ...

Based on a comprehensive literature search, this meta review analyzes to what extent past literature reviews on IS business value have covered key research areas and preserved their key findings. The results show that while some areas have been explored extensively, some other crucial areas, such as accounting performance, the growth of intangible assets, and the differentiation between economi...

INTRODUCTION The pricing and reimbursement process in Bulgaria is based on different approaches implemented by NCPR among which is external and internal reference pricing A pharmacoeconomic guidelines (PE) with a HTA approach for assessment of submitted dossiers was implemented y the competent authority (CA) in Bulgaria in April 2015. Requirements for efficacy, safety, benefits, adverse events,...

BACKGROUND A key to reduce and eradicate racial disparities in hypertension outcomes is to understand their causes. We aimed at evaluating racial differences in antihypertensive drug utilization patterns and blood pressure control by insurance status, age, sex, and presence of comorbidities. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 8796 hypertensive individuals ≥18 years of age were identified from the...

Comparing data from both the 1999 MCBS and drug utilization data supplied by the survey respondents' pharmacies, the author details the methods used to determine the level of misreporting of drug expenditures in the MCBS. Findings suggest that prescription drug expenditures are underreported by 17 percent and the number of prescriptions used is underreported by 17.7 percent. The data also ident...