Generic and therapeutic substitution: a viewpoint on achieving best practice in Europe.

摘要

The need to manage and minimize costs is increasingly important for healthcare systems across the world. Generic substitution is already used widely throughout Europe and payers are increasingly looking towards therapeutic substitution to make additional savings (see Table 1 for definitions).These are valid methods for containing costs, particularly for conditions such as cardiovascular disease, where large numbers of people need to be treated in the best possible way to minimize disease burden. However, when switches of medication are driven purely on economic grounds, there may be potential conflicts between the needs of the healthcare provider and those of individual patients, and this may impact on patients' safety and treatment outcomes.