Since the medical insurance has come to cover up to 90-days at one time in outpatient base in Dec. 1995, the long-term medication(over 30days) has been increased abruptly and rapidly. The object of this study is to determine the influence of outpatient long-term medication at one visit on filling the prescription, dispensing and administration and to enlarge the effectiveness of dispensing and administration in outpatient pharmacy. We compared the data related the long-term medication in 1998 with those in 1996 in Seoul National University Hospital. The number of order day, incidence and frequency of long-term medication were reviewed in different medical department, disease group and each diseased respectively. The average waiting time for medication per year was also investigated to recognize the influence on doing dispensing and administration directly. In basic, we figured out the average number of outpatients for one day, total amount of drug expense for every outpatient and total amount of dispensing fee per year from 1996 to 1998.
The medication over 60-days was most increased, cardiovasular diseased and hypertension is most frequent in long-term medication. The average number of outpatient for one day has been increased in every year.
Although the long-term medication was increased continuously at much rate, the average waiting time for medication has been shorter by adopting alternative measures(i.e automatic transport system, diverse preliminary preparation).
The result of this study indicates that increased number of long-term medication caused increased load of dispensing, increased number of first-coming patients, increased income of the hospital. In the viewpoint of patients, they do not have to visit clinic as often as before, but the necessities of medication counselling for drug adverse reaction and management of noncompliance due to the long-term medication are increased as much as.
|