Letter

Drug rationing in a teaching hospital

BMJ 1994; 309 doi: 10.1136/bmj.309.6946.54 (Published 2 July 1994)
Cite this as: BMJ 1994;309:54.1

Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment. Please log in or subscribe below.

  1. A McLean,
  2. L Ioannides-Demos,
  3. N Tong,
  4. D Topliss
  1. Alfred Hospital, Victoria, Australia 3181.

    EDITOR, - Felix Bochner and colleagues make a useful contribution to the database related to drug utilisation review and pharmacoeconomic outcomes.1 We write to comment on the philosophical position and strategic and operational assumptions in their paper. We believe that budgets can be contained by a process other than rationing by prioritisation, and we present our experience at the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, to support our assertions. We also comment on the management fallacy inherent in assigning arbitrary budgetary targets for use of pharmaceuticals.

    The table shows the raw year on year (June) budgetary data for the hospital over the past six …

    Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment

    Subscribe

    Article access

    Article access for 1 day

    Purchase this article for £20 $30 €32*

    The PDF version can be downloaded as your personal record

    * Prices do not include VAT

    Rapid responses

    THIS WEEK'S POLL

    Read related article

    See previous polls

    BMJ most popular