Evaluating the Confluence of Demographic and Morbidity Parameters in Pharmaceutical Care
Anastasia Politi, Kyriakos Souliotis, Nikolaos Frangos

Abstract
The analysis aims to investigate latent cost synthesis differentiations among distinct morbidity areas of pharmaceutical consumption and thus to take a thorough look at the generating process of pharmaceutical expenditure volatility that burdens OECD economies, and especially Greek economy, over the last years. The methodological vehicle for this purpose is the deployment of an algebraic form for the decomposition of pharmaceutical demand of prescription medicines into frequency and severity components. The analysis is supported by the use of the individual characteristic of age, which according to literature is a significant factor of pharmaceutical demand variability, and therapeutic category, which is herein ex ante considered a morbidity parameter of pharmaceutical demand. The decomposition procedure is applied for all therapeutic categories of medicines. According to the results, frequency effects play the key role towards severity ones for the pharmaceutical expenditure generating process, this norm does not however apply within each therapeutic category.

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