Retrospective Analysis of the Repeat Prescribing Pattern for Diabetic Patients Consuming Insulin

Introduction: People with chronic diseases need to regularly visit the doctor to renew their prescriptions, which cause more cost and discomfort for patients. Designing a repeat prescription system can be helpful. However, it needs knowledge about the prescription repeat profile for the intended disease. This study aimed to evaluate the repeat pattern of outpatient prescriptions for diabetic patients consuming insulin.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, prescriptions written between 2013 to 2021 for 200 diabetic patients were evaluated in Hamadan, Iran. Data on total number of regimens and prescriptions, type of prescribed insulins in each regimen, intervals between prescriptions, duration of regimen consumption, and number and type of changes made between two regimens underwent descriptive statistical analysis.

Results: 10148 prescriptions –belonged to 200 patients (121 males and 79 females)- were examined. The average prescriptions number for a person was 2.65 ± 1.21 and the mean interval between two prescriptions was 1.71 ± 0.80 months. The highest number of medication regimens experienced by the cases was six. The most frequent changes made in insulin regimen were deletion and addition as well as addition itself.

Conclusion: It seems that currently, in terms of patient referrals for repeated insulin prescriptions for diabetic patients, doctors have moved to some extent towards eliminating unnecessary referrals. However, if higher efficiency of this process is intended, designing a system considering clinical status of each patient seems necessary. Artificial intelligence and machine learning may be helpful to this end.