[Prescription of generic pharmaceutic specialties in discharge reports at a university hospital].

Background: The use of generic pharmaceutic specialities (GPS) has risen lately as a necessary tool in the control of sanitary expenses. This use is becoming of high importance, even in the non-medical media. Our aim was to stablish its use profile in patients discharged from a University Hospital.
Material and Method: To analyse the use of GPS in 256 discharge reports, randomly chosen from the Clinical Documentation Service, belonging to eight different Units for two months (June-July 2000).
Results: A total of 1233 prescriptions were reported. Among them, there was an equivalent generic drug to the medication prescribed in 220 cases (18%), but only in five ocasions one of them was indicated (2.2%). The cost of the drugs with an equivalent form in GPS was calculated in 707,521 pts. This cost could have been reduced to 505,865 pts. taking into account the average price of the GPS. In case of indicating the cheapest one, the cost could have been 479,672 pts.
Conclusions: There is an important proportion of GPS to indicate as an alternative to the usual medicaments prescribed. However, nowadays, the GPS prescription is not a usual practice among the hospital physicians.