Irrational prescription and its costs in neonatal surfactant therapy: public and private hospitals of Iran in 2018

Table 5 Frequency and costs of irrational prescriptions based on different reasons

Type of surfactant	Irrational drug selection or irrational drug selection and dose	Only irrational dose	proportionally added unverifiable dose items ^c	A total number of irrational prescriptions	Rational doses with no sensitivity	A total number of irrational prescriptions + rational doses with no sensitivity
Curosurf	86	100	51	237	18	254
Curosurf	$25,638.62	$29,812.35	$15,204.30	$70,655.28	$5,366.22	$76,021.51
Survanta	23	70	35	128	57	183
Survanta	$5,714.03	$17,390.54	$8,695.27	$31,799.84	$14,160.86	$45,712.28
BLES	14	16	8	38	29	67
BLES	$2,659.72	$3,039.69	$1,519.84	$7,219.26	$7,204.65	$14,423.92
Alveofact	1	2	1	4	16	20
Alveofact	$385.80	$771.61	$385.80	$1,543.22	$6,172.91	$7,716.13
Total	124	188	95	407	120	527
Total	$34,398.19	$51,014.20	$25,805.22	$111,217.63	$32,904.65	$143,873.85

Data are presented as number and cost $
^a One case in which the type of surfactant was not known, but it was irrational in the drug selection (Column 2) and two cases that were not unverifiable in general (Column 4) were all added to the Curosurf category.
^b One case of unverifiable prescriptions was proportionally added to Survanta.
^c There were five prescriptions in which the drug selection and dose were rational, but the drug time was irrational. These five cases are shown in Column 4.
The average cost of each wrong drug selection was $34,398.19/124 = $277.40
The average cost of each wrong dose was $51,014.20/188 = $271.35
The average cost of each irrational prescription was $274.37

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