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Psychotropic drug prescriptions by medical specialty
Mark, T., Levit, K. R., & Buck, J. A. (2009). Datapoints: Psychotropic drug prescriptions by medical specialty. Psychiatric Services, 60(9), 1167-1167. https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2009.60.9.1167
The important role of general practitioners in prescribing antidepressant medications and treating depression has been documented. However, the extent to which general practitioners are prescribing other types of psychotropic medications has received less emphasis. This study used data from August 2006 to July 2007 from the National Prescription Audit (NPA) Plus database of IMS to examine this question.
IMS collects transaction information each month from approximately 36,000 retail pharmacies, representing about 70% of all retail pharmacies, which when weighted represent all prescriptions filled in retail outlets in the United States. Using a separate sample of retail pharmacy transactions that includes the physician's Drug Enforcement Administration number, IMS assigns physician specialty information to obtain an estimate of the total number of prescriptions filled in retail pharmacies by medical specialty.
