Within Medication Process 9, the administration appointment is reserved for the pharmacist and the patient. The administration appointment ... how does it even work in practice?
The administration appointment
A doctor prescribes medication to the patient and makes a medication appointment. The pharmacist receives this appointment together with a request for dispensation. On the basis of these two, the pharmacist determines the administration appointment together with the patient. In doing so, they coordinate the correct medication resulting from the request for dispensing and record the administration times. In other words, they agree on the times at which the patient takes the medication.
Everyone in the pharmacy is entitled to the correct administration arrangements that lead to a correct administration list. In the current situation, the patient often has to be placed in a distribution environment in order to be able to define the correct administration times. It is often argued that patients without Baxter medication are not entitled to it. This is different with Medication Process 9. Everyone receives a correct administration list.
Verification of medication use
Establishing the administration list in consultation with the patient is immediately a good time to carry out the verification of medication use. Is the patient still taking the same medication according to the schedule as known to the pharmacy? To check this, one goes through the list of medications together and it is checked per medication whether the medication is still applicable, whether the dosage is still correct and whether the time schedule corresponds with the actual situation. The pharmacist and the patient agree on this.
One-way traffic
At home, the patient takes his medication independently or with the help of a home care organisation. Many home care organisations work with the well-known administration apps, whereby the pharmacy makes medication data available to the app suppliers. The care worker registers in the app which medication the patient actually uses. And then... the process stops. The pharmacist does not receive any direct feedback about the administration and therefore does not get to know whether the patient is taking the medication as agreed in the administration agreement. Possibly via a portal, but this is very cumbersome. A special situation if you ask me.
Feedback in Pharmacy Information System
A feedback of the medication taken or not taken directly in the Pharmacy Information System would enable the pharmacist to enter into a conversation with the patient on this basis by asking questions such as "Why are you not taking the medication?" and "Do you suffer from side effects? It also offers the possibility to make proposals to the doctor to change the medication appointment. This feedback would enable the pharmacist to take on that desired care task and thus make therapy counselling really work for individual patients.
Conclusion: There is still much to be gained. As a first step, let's make this whole administration process transparent. In this way, we as pharmacists might in the future move away from fees based only on prescription rules and more on care processes.
