Investigating the Effect of Daroyar Plan on Indicators of the Number and Cost of Drug Prescriptions in Iran

Daroyar project was implemented with the aim of regulating fair and sustainable access of people to medicines and increasing insurance coverage. This study investigated the effect of the plan on the number of prescriptions and the cost of the health insurance organization.

This study is a cross-sectional retrospective study. The research community is the outpatient electronic prescription of drugs of Iranian health insurance organization in the second 6 months of 1400 and 1401. In this study, the number of drug prescriptions, the cost paid by the insurance organization, and the number of service-providing pharmacies were extracted from the prescription dashboards of the Health Insurance Organization's electronic system. Data analysis was done using Excel 2019 software.

The number of prescriptions increased by 71% and costs by 251% in 1401. The average cost increased by 105%, but the average number of prescriptions, excluding preferred currency, decreased by 12%. The preferred currency share of the total cost paid by the organization for electronic drug prescription was 57%. The highest cost paid by the organization was to Tehran province (13%). The amount of preferred currency has been increasing from October to March.

The Daroyar project has led to the improvement of people's access to pharmaceutical services. The decrease in the average net share of the organization per prescription is a sign of the coverage of cheap drugs. The significant share of the preferred currency indicates the success of the project in providing domestically produced drugs.