Research Unit of General Practice, Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Winsløwparken 19, 3rd, 5000, Odense C, Denmark. tdybdahl@health.sdu.dk
To analyse associations between indicators for adoption of new drugs and to test the hypothesis that physicians' early adoption of new drugs is a personal trait independent of drug groups.
In a population-based cohort study using register data, we analysed the prescribing of new drugs by Danish general practitioners. Angiotensin-II antagonists, triptans, selective cyclo-oxygenase-2 antagonists and esomeprazol were used in the assessment. As indicators of new drug uptake, we used adoption time, cumulative incidence, preference proportion, incidence rate and prescription cost and volume. For each measure, we ranked the general practices. Ranks were pair-wise plotted, and Pearson's correlation coefficient ( r) was calculated. Next, we analysed the correlation between ranks across different drug classes.
For all indicators, the general practitioners' adoption of one group of drugs was poorly associated with adoption of others ( r