Canada's first prescription drug atlas maps billions in spending

Dec 15 2005

Researchers at the University of British Columbia Centre for Health Services and Policy Research have developed a comprehensive portrait of pharmaceutical spending in Canada -- more than $20 billion by the end of 2005 -- and assembled the results into a first-of-its-kind atlas.

The Canadian Rx Atlas uses prescription data provided by IMS Health Canada, an international health industry information company, from 2,100 retail pharmacies to break down trends in drug spending between 1998 and 2004, and provides detailed depictions of regional variations in spending. The report is now available at www.chspr.ubc.ca.

“The Atlas gives policy makers and practitioners access to visual and intuitive representations of the factors driving pharmaceutical expenditures,” says Steve Morgan, lead researcher on the project. “This includes price changes, increases in usage, or choices made by doctors and patients when deciding which drug to use to treat a particular condition.”

The Canadian Rx Atlas features over 40 full-colour maps detailing the impact of increased pharmaceutical use, the selection of newer, more expensive drugs, and price changes. It deliberately contains minimal analysis and interpretation, and focuses on making the data as accessible as possible.

“While this atlas is step forward in terms of breaking down what prescription drugs Canadians are spending money on, we still know frighteningly little about how these drugs are being used and about the sources of cost increases,” says Morgan. “This atlas underscores the importance of national efforts to build data systems for monitoring pharmaceutical utilization, expenditures, and, most importantly, health outcomes.”

Key Findings

• Per capita, residents of Quebec and New Brunswick will have spent about 50 per cent more on drugs than residents of British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

• Cardiovascular and cholesterol drugs account for about 40 per cent of total prescription drug spending in Canada.

• Per capita spending on prescription drugs doubled between 1998 and 2004. This was largely due to increases in the volume of drugs being used, and due to the selection of more costly drugs from within drug categories when treating a particular illness.
• Regional variations in drug spending are large, even across the most common pharmaceutical categories such as cardiovascular drugs, psychotherapeutic medicines, and cholesterol drugs.

• In general, residents of eastern Canada spend more on prescription drugs than those in western Canada. In 2004, per capita spending on the medicines tracked in the Canadian Rx Atlas was $312 in Saskatchewan, while per capita spending in New Brunswick was $486.

• Variation in spending across provinces stems largely from differences in the quantity of prescription drugs being purchased. However, differences in the cost of drugs chosen from within therapeutic categories also added to regional variations. Residents of Ontario and Quebec tended to use more expensive drugs to treat a particular illness than the rest of Canada.

The Canadian Rx Atlas features over 40 full-colour maps detailing the impact of increased pharmaceutical use, the selection of newer, more expensive drugs, and price changes. It deliberately contains minimal analysis and interpretation, and focuses on making the data as accessible as possible.

Morgan challenges the federal and provincial governments to invest the equivalent of just one per cent of Canada’s annual drug expenditure in systems to monitor utilization, expenditure, and related health benefits and risks.

“If policy makers and researchers worked together to monitor these factors systematically, the information we collect would help us devise policies that ensure all Canadians receive the right medicines, at the right time, for the right price,” he says.

The UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research stimulates scientific enquiry into population health and into ways in which health services can best be organized, funded and delivered.

Operating in more than 100 countries, IMS Health, which provided data for the study, is the world's leading provider of information solutions to the pharmaceutical and health-care industries.