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A Study on Medicines Consumption Pattern of CHAG Providers in Ghana

Daniel Kojo Arhinful*, Peter Yeboah, James Duah, Maxwell Akwasi Antwi, Alex Attachey, Michael Preko Ntiri, Irene Andoh, George Afful, Angela Owusu Sekyere, Tobias Rinke de Wit

Background: A well-functioning pharmaceutical supply system is an important aspect of ensuring efficient and proper clinical services in any health care system. This analysis was conducted on 31-member health facilities of the Christian Health Association Ghana (CHAG) to determine current consumption patterns and related expenditure for medicines on the Ghana Essential Medicines List. The overall aim was to inform the setting up of a digital pharmaceutical supply chain management system for CHAG providers.

Methodology: Our Always Better Control (ABC) analysis involved a one-year retrospective cross-sectional review of drug consumption and related expenditure data to help identify medicines that required focused attention. Drugs were divided in three categories: Category A (80% of total annual consumption), Category B (15%) and Category C (5%). Anatomical therapeutic chemical codes were then used to categorize the top twenty (category A) essential drugs to find out the highest consuming therapeutic categories.

Results: The total value of essential medicines consumed in 2016 by the studies CHAG hospitals was GHS 29,327,267 (US$6,665,288) and the clinics was GHS 2,923,561 (US$664,445). From the ABC analysis, 23.9% of medicines consumed 79.4% of total drug budget for hospitals and 31.5% consumed 79.5% of the drugs budget for clinics representing category A. The therapeutic category of the top twenty medicines showed a pattern of high antibiotic use with commensurate high cost to facilities.

Conclusions: In the context of CHAG’s planned digital supply chain, this study showed applying the ABC and TCA analysis provides a useful tool to informed decisions on essential medicines selection to achieve cost savings on expensive medicines.