A pilot study on generic medicine substitution practices among community pharmacists in the State of Penang, Malaysia

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the generic substitution (GS) practices undertaken by community pharmacists in the State of Penang, Malaysia with a focus on the extent of communication between pharmacists and prescribers on issues related to GS, consumer's acceptance on the GS and estimation of cost saving achieved for patients opted for GS.

A cross-sectional descriptive study for a period of 2 months using a specific questionnaire as a data collection tool was undertaken with a random sample of 40 community pharmacies located in the State of Penang.

By the end of the study period, 34 out of 40 pharmacies contacted participated in the study. Forty-seven per cent of pharmacists consulted prescribers while promoting GS to their consumers. Majority of the prescribers (84.4%) when contacted by the pharmacists accepted the suggestion for substitution. From consumers' perspective, 88% (n = 156) of the consumers involved in this study accepted pharmacist's recommendation to generically substitute their prescribed medications. Through acceptance of GS, it has been estimated that the overall consumers' expenses on drugs can be reduced to a total of RM6137 (US$1615; US$1 = RM3.80) and this corresponds to a cost saving of 61.1%.

The outcome of the present study showed that through GS recommendation by community pharmacist, consumers can save the expenditure of their prescribed medications.