In Switzerland on the other hand, the majority (72%to8282%) perceived their prescriptive privileges as an advantage for the profession [ 15, 25], and between 58% and 76% wanted to see these privileges extended to include some additional prescription-based analgesic and muscle relaxant medications.
Similar to the Robert [ 15] survey, the majority of respondents (72%) agreed that the ability to prescribe OTC analgesic and anti-inflammatory medications was an advantage for chiropractors in Switzerland, while 58% also wanted this privilege extended to include some additional prescription-based NSAIDs, muscle relaxants, and analgesics.
This analytical approach may result in some exposure misclassification as some unexposed patients may have initiated therapy during follow-up and some exposed patients did not receive additional prescriptions during follow-up, resulting in a potential bias towards the null.
Practices in local authority areas 1 and 4 wrote significantly more additional prescriptions than average.
Patients with a prescription for diabetes in a given year were considered as still prevalent in the following year, irrespective of whether were additional prescriptions.
For example, in Thailand where most of the relevant medicines were under patent, it was estimated that around 10,000 additional prescriptions would be prescribed if all patents were waived, generating an increase in access of some 50%.
This estimate does not factor in additional costs incurred, such as practice receptionist or doctor time to print out, check and sign the additional prescriptions.
The rates of disease and number of additional prescriptions per GP for each local authority area are shown in Table 2.
The relationship between the size of the practice and the number of additional prescriptions per GP was explored by using Spearman rank correlation.
A large proportion of individuals were prescribed at least two types of laxatives during the study period (requiring additional prescriptions and health care visits).
