Table 2:

Shares of prescription volume and expenditure accounted for by the essential medicines and other drugs in the same chemical and pharmacologic subgroups in 2015, by province^*

Variable	Province; share of prescription volume or expenditure, %^†
Variable	All	BC	AB	SK	MB	ON	QC	NB	NS	PEI	NL
Total prescriptions, millions	568.4	49.9	41.7	14.9	15.2	186.8	225.9	11.4	12.2	1.9	8.5
Essential medicines	44	48	43	43	44	44	43	44	43	47	43
Essential medicines and other drugs in same chemical subgroups	77	77	74	76	76	76	79	75	75	78	76
Essential medicines and other drugs in same pharmacologic subgroups	90	89	88	88	89	91	91	88	88	90	89
Publicly paid prescriptions, millions	377.5	31.8	14.0	7.0	7.2	147.9	155.6	5.2	4.3	0.9	3.7
Essential medicines	50	53	50	47	49	52	48	50	48	55	46
Essential medicines and other drugs in same chemical subgroups	83	82	78	79	80	82	86	78	79	84	78
Essential medicines and other drugs in same pharmacologic subgroups	94	94	88	91	92	94	96	90	90	93	89
Total expenditure, $ billions	26.2	2.6	2.6	0.7	0.8	10.1	7.4	0.7	0.8	0.1	0.4
Essential medicines	30	33	31	35	31	28	29	32	32	36	32
Essential medicines and other drugs in same chemical subgroups	63	65	63	70	66	60	64	65	67	72	68
Essential medicines and other drugs in same pharmacologic subgroups	83	87	83	87	85	82	82	82	86	86	84
Public expenditure, $ billions	10.8	1.0	0.8	0.3	0.3	4.8	3.0	0.2	0.2	0.0	0.1
Essential medicines	31	33	31	34	28	30	30	36	35	46	35
Essential medicines and other drugs in same chemical subgroups	61	65	61	70	65	59	62	66	69	80	70
Essential medicines and other drugs in same pharmacologic subgroups	82	91	78	87	84	81	82	82	86	89	83

Note: AB = Alberta, BC = British Columbia, MB = Manitoba, NB = New Brunswick, NL = Newfoundland and Labrador, NS = Nova Scotia, ON = Ontario, PEI = Prince Edward Island, QC = Quebec, SK = Saskatchewan.
↵* Calculations are based on data from IMS Health and the National Prescription Drug Utilization Information System database of the Canadian Institute for Health Information (see Appendix 2 for details, available at www.cmaj.ca/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1503/cmaj.161082/-/DC1).
↵† Unless stated otherwise.