59

In France, there are potentially important increases in efficiency in the domain of prescription drug use. France is not only characterised by particularly high pharmaceutical expenditures in comparison to other comparable countries, but numerous reports on therapeutic classes and precise pathologies show prescription practices to be variable, unequal in quality and in conformity to medical recommendations, and, in many cases, excessive. For the past few years, the action undertaken by the healthcare system to change this behaviour has been strengthened, increased and highly structured. They include communication campaigns for the public, raising the consciousness of professionals on the references of correct use by a network of delegates from the healthcare system on personalised information about their practices. In hindsight, this approach seems promising: significant results were obtained, such as in the domain of statins, with a distinctive inflexion in prescription practices. The methods and conditions for developing similar long-term efficiency approaches are discussed using this experiment as a starting point.