The Determination of the Factors Affecting Pharmaceutical Consumption in Respect to Provinces in Turkey

Abstract

Pharmaceutical expense constitutes a great part of health service expenses. The increase in pharmaceutical consumption will also increase the health expenses. The aim of this study is to identify the factors affecting pharmaceutical consumption of provinces with the quantile regression model based on 2013 data of Turkey. In the case of not being able to use classic regression hypothesis, quantile regression that is one of the robust regression methods has been used as an alternative to multilinear regression and analysis has been done based on various quantiles. Total pharmaceutical consumption of provinces in 2013 has been used as dependent variable. All variables in OLS and 75th quantile regression models have been found statistically meaningful. According to the results of the analysis, it has been determined that the population of the provinces consisting of 65 years old and above, life for male at birth, life for female at birth and whether the province has a coast on or no are significantly effective in pharmaceutical consumption.