Politiche regionali e variabilità della spesa farmaceutica convenzionata

The research aims at evaluating the relationship between different regional policies and the cross-regional variability in the public per capitapharmaceutical expenditure. This relationship was matched with the effects of other variables, that affect the demand for and the supply of drugs but are not (or are only partially) influenced by regional actions (including population age structure and socio-economic conditions, morbidity, hospitalisation rates, pressure of pharmaceutical companies’ reps, GP and pharmacy density). The study is based on a qualitative and a quantitative approach. Regional policies on pharmaceuticals have been surveyed through a qualitative checklist. The explicative variables of the cross-regional variability in the pharmaceutical expenditure has been investigated through a multiple regression model. Cross-regional variability in the pharmaceutical expenditure proved to be explained related with differences among regional policies and partly with other variables This result may prove that (i) on the one side, regional policies may contribute to cost-containment; (ii) on the other side, cross-regional variability does not depend only on regional and local policies (and the effects of these policies on the appropriateness of demand for and prescriptions of drugs); (iii) should regions present the same (high) level of maturity as far as pharmaceutical policy is concerned, the cross-regional variability in the pharmaceutical expenditure would still remain rather high.

Simone Gerzeli, Claudio Jommi, Stefano Villa, Politiche regionali e variabilità della spesa farmaceutica convenzionata in "ECONOMIA PUBBLICA " 5/2003, pp , DOI: