The Cost of Prescription Poultices in Japan
Many poultices are prescribed daily in Japanese medical institutions, but most people are unaware of the national cost burden and the details of their prescription. This study examines the national burden of the annual pharmaceutical cost of poultices as defined in Japan, and estimates the predictors of this cost using national health insurance claims data.
The study was published in
The study extracted poultice product records from a summary table file obtained from the second edition of NDB Open Data Japan, calculated the annual cost of poultices by patient age group (5 years), gender, and prefecture, and conducted multiple linear regression analyses using ecological studies treating each prefecture as a separate unit and the age-standardized cost of poultices per resident as the dependent variable.
Results.
The annual pharmaceutical cost of poultices prescribed in Japan in FY 2015 was 149 billion yen, and multiple linear regression analysis showed that the number of orthopedic surgeons and physiatrists per 100,000 residents was significantly positively correlated with the annual pharmaceutical cost of poultices per resident.
Therefore, the number of orthopedic surgeons and physiatrists per 100,000 people can be used as a predictor to make these estimates.
Itoh, H., Saito, T., Nojiri, S. et al. National burden of the pharmaceutical cost of wet compresses and its cost predictors: nationwide cross-sectional study in Japan. Health Econ Rev 9, 20 (2019). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13561-019-0238-6
Summary
Some people may think that this is a natural result of an aging society, and they are right. However, as a hypothesis, it is not only the elderly who are prescribed poultices, as these prescriptions are mainly given to boys, mainly athletes under the age of 19.
Currently, there seems to be a limit to the number of prescriptions, but in recent years there has been a problem with 908 poultices being prescribed per patient. Therefore, there seems to be a background that more and more medical institutions are focusing on rehabilitation nowadays, but it's just a poultice.
