Directed medical education programs modify prescribing practices and can improve care.1 It would be useful to learn how data management groups like IMS HEALTH could work together not only with pharmaceutical companies but also with medical societies, individual physicians and health services administrators to identify opportunities to improve prescribing practices.
IMS is not the only organization that provides information on physician-specific practices.2 The Canadian Institute for Health Information provides health organizations and provincial governments with such data.3 Just as pharmaceutical companies have used prescribing information for marketing purposes to increase sales and revenue, so provincial governments and health organizations have used information on comparative lengths of hospital stays from the Canadian Institute for Health Information to reduce the costs of care.
Responsible governance of our health care system requires the capacity to link health care activities with the results of those activities, something that neither the IMS prescription database nor the Canadian Institute for Health Information databases for hospital days can do.