Journal of primary health care
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The Viewpoint article entitled 'Peer support workers: an untapped resource in primary mental health care' was published with incorrect author details as supplied. The first author of the paper is Juan J Tellez. ⋯ Peer support workers: an untapped resource in primary mental health care. J Prim Health Care. 2015;7(1):84–87.
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New Zealand's Pharmaceutical Management Agency (PHARMAC) manages the list of medicines available for prescribing with government subsidy, within a fixed annual medicines budget. PHARMAC achieves this through a mix of pricing strategies including reference pricing. In 2011, PHARMAC applied generic reference pricing to olanzapine tablets. ⋯ The study shows that a switch can be made safely from originator olanzapine to a generic brand, and suggests that switching to generics should generally be viewed more positively. Generic reference pricing achieves considerable savings and, as a pricing policy, could be applied more widely.
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Older people tend to take more medicines and prescription medicine costs may influence medicine adherence. ⋯ Older people in this study mostly viewed their prescription medicines and related costs as reasonable; however, 17% and 41%, respectively, found medicines costs and GP consultation costs expensive. Larger, in-depth studies across New Zealand are needed to determine the sections of the population that find these costs expensive, and to explore how this might affect medicine adherence.
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Medication use in community-dwelling older people: pharmacoepidemiology of psychotropic utilisation.
Psychotropic medications have a significant adverse drug event profile, particularly in older adults, and appropriate use is paramount. Patterns of prescribing in community-dwelling older adults in New Zealand remain unknown. ⋯ The prevalence of psychotropic medication use is high in community-dwelling older people with disability and very high in community-dwelling older people with depressive symptoms, but varies by gender and level of depression.
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Appropriate referral from primary care to hospital specialists is a critical component of general practice patient management. This study investigated the quality of such referrals in a group of general practitioners (GPs) and nurses. ⋯ This study demonstrated that feedback to general practitioners and nurses can improve the quality of referral letters to secondary care. The introduction of electronic referral letters as used on the West Coast did not lead to any further improvement in referral quality.