Peer review meetings of family doctors show electronic data collection reduces the variability of pharmaceutical prescriptions at the local health authority of Empoli

Abstract

The awareness of resource spending, with regards to medical prescriptions, is crucial for clinical governance. The variability of behaviour in writing medical prescriptions by doctors is another crucial factor of clinical governance. Both can be addressed and controlled by showing electronic data collection. Peer review meetings, headed by physicians with statistical and epidemiological expertise, led to a statistically significant decrease in variability of drug prescriptions. In the future, we would like to extend peer reviews to include the topics of in-patient hospitalization, appointments with specialists and all other related medical needs, in the attempt to minimize variability amongst medical requests and behaviours. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.