| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,900,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥1,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,700,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥2,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,200,000)
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| Research Abstract |
We examined the present situation wherein pharmacies claimed the fees for preventing adverse duplications and/or interactions of prescription drugs, in order to consider the more relevant and effective payment system in Japan's health insurance systems. All of the pharmacies registered as "insurance pharmacy" by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in April 1999 were surveyed in this regard. Out of 4,854 pharmacies, 1,506 (31.0%) responded. Of all of the prescriptions received by these pharmacies, the proportion of prescriptions claiming the fee was 0.0088%. This proportion was not significantly different between "Monzen Yakkyoku" pharmacies that received more than 70% of prescriptions from a particular medical institution, and the rest pharmacies. Other characteristics of pharmacies, such as number of pharmacists, size of the pharmacy, years of operation, being registered as a standard pharmacy by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government or not, were not significantly related to the proportion. We added an interview survey on some pharmacists, and found that the current payment system was inflexible in terms of claiming such fees. We also found, by another study, that more than 40% of the patients concurrently visited two medical institutions or more : Therefore, the issue of preventing adverse duplications and/or interactions of those drugs prescribed by different physicians/institutions is very important in terms of reforming the payment system.
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