Trends in prescribing in primary care in Croatia, 2000-2012: prescribing volume, costs and regulatory measures.

The rise of pharmaceutical costs is a significant burden to overall health care expenditure. The Croatian Health Insurance Fund (CHIF) in attempts of its containment, use administrative measures directed toward the two greatest generators: pharmaceutical industry, through negotiating prices and periodic revisions of basic and suplemental drug lists, and primary care physicians, through limits in the volume of prescriptions, and annual financial expenditure. The aim of the study was to determine trends in quantity of issued prescriptions and pharmaceutical expanditure from 2000 to 2012.

Trends in preventive activities for the adult population in family medicine in Croatia: 1995-2012.

A few preventive activities were recorded in Croatian family medicine (FM) from 1995 until 2003, and then in 2004, additional fee-for-service reimbursement for general check-ups for people aged 45 to 65 years was introduced. The aim of this study was to investigate the trends in preventive activities before and after the introduction of those measures by using the Croatian Health Service Yearbooks for 1995-2012 as the main database. Data on the number of preventive, general, and total number of check-ups were collected.