[Delegated prescription by specialists in primary care]

To describe the qualitative-quantitative features of Primary Care prescriptions originated by specialists.

A crossover descriptive study.

Txantrea Health Centre (Pamplona).

All the prescriptions originated by out-clinic or hospital specialists over a two-month period, in three Health Centre clinics.

The number of prescriptions passed on to Primary Care was 3,009, costing 5,303,071 pesetas, which was 31.61% of the drugs prescribed and 38.08% of the pharmaceutical expenditure of the three clinics during the period under study. 65.88% of the prescriptions corresponded to out-clinic specialists and 34.11% to hospital specialists. They were not accompanied by a clinical note, the treatment and the length of treatment in 33.46%, 36.55% and 45.39% of cases, respectively. The group and sub-group with most prescriptions passed on were Cardiovascular Apparatus and Calcium antagonists. The commonest active principal was acetylsalicylic acid. 79.89% were taken orally, 88.20% were single drugs and 73.28% of the medicines had high intrinsic value.

An important proportion of Primary Care's pharmaceutical expenditure was identified as originating with specialists. There was scant information given for following up the patients. Improvement of communication between different care levels on the basis of common procedures and objectives would be a useful step towards better quality of care.