2020 Volume 40 Issue 2 Pages 61-72
Although administrative policies for multi-drug prescriptions of psychotropic drugs have been enforced by the revisions of medical fees, the effects of the policies have not been fully evaluated. In this study, we evaluated whether the trends of the number of patients who were prescribed multiple psychotropic drugs have been changed by the revisions of medical fees using electronic healthcare records data of a University hospital. We used the data of patients who were prescribed a psychotropic drug in Kyushu University Hospital from April 2008 to March 2019. We used GLS and GLARMA as interrupted time series analysis methods. As a result, it was shown that the proportion of patients who were prescribed multiple anti-psychotic drugs or anxiolytics has begun to decrease since the introduction of the policies. As a result of interrupted time series analyses, the estimate of interaction between time and the policy effect was -0.143（95％CI：-0.275, -0.011） for anti-psychotic drugs, and -0.394（95％CI：-0.634, -0.154）for anxiolytics. Therefore, it was shown that the trend of the number of patients who were prescribed multiple drugs has been changed downwardly for anti-psychotic drugs and anxiolytics.
