Análise econômica da conciliação de medicamentos em uma unidade de internação de um hospital de ensino

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Drug-related morbidity and mortality have become an important health problem, being the source of an increase in hospital admissions, compromising patient safety and increasing health spending. In this context, a medication reconciliation arises with the aim of preventing and correcting medication errors, therefore, treatment failures related to pharmacotherapy, discontinuation of treatment or continuation of inappropriate therapy. Based on this, a reconciliation to improve outcomes and reduce hospital costs with patients' medicines, optimizing the use of resources in public and private services. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the economic impact of the conciliation of missing medications in a hospital in a teaching hospital related to the cost of pharmacotherapy used during hospitalization. METHODS: This is an observational, descriptive and retrospective cost-analysis study carried out from September to November 2017. The study involved the analysis of medical records and reconciliation sheets for patients admitted to the medical clinic. The estimation of direct medical costs with drugs was performed through the micro-costing technique. Data were calculated and presented using descriptive statistics. RESULTS: The drugs with omission discrepancies (n=179) of 41 patients, equivalent to 101 different active principles, were reconciled, representing a total cost of R$ 3.181,43 ± 44,8 (mean=R$ 77,60/patient ). Of the reconciled drugs, 49 (48.5%) were contained in the standardization strip of the hospital, corresponding to a value of R$ 1.256,60 and 52 (51.5%) were not contained in the standardization stripe, representing a value of R$ 1.92,.83. CONCLUSION: The economic approach of the study demonstrates that the conciliation of medications is directly involved in the costs of medicines used by patients. In addition, the economic aspects of conciliation related to medication consumption during hospitalization represent a small part of the economic benefits generated by this service. In this perspective, it is fundamental to carry out complete pharmacoeconomic studies, which economically evaluate the implementation and development of the conciliation service, as well as the clinical outcomes of the patients.