Piotr Merks, Michał Byliniak, Aleksandra Olszewska, Damian Świeczkowski, Aneta Paluch, Rafał Śliwa, Krzysztof Słomiak, Justyna Kaźmierczak, Katarzyna Krupa, Jerzy Krysiński

Usługa farmaceutyczna – powtarzanie recept sposobem na integrację środowiska lekarskiego i farmaceutycznego
2015-11-19

Repeat dispensing – pharmaceutical care service that integrates pharmacy and medical professions

In the current time of an increasing number of patients suffering from chronic medical conditions, there is a trend of looking for new solutions that will not only increase the cost-effectiveness of pharmacological therapies, but also improve the quality of life of chronic sufferers. More and more attention is paid to the understanding and introduction of an innovative service to the Polish pharmacy market, the repeat dispensing system, which presents prescriptions with future date of dispensing. The need for such service is dictated by the current situation. At the moment, the lack of a repeat dispensing service in Poland forces doctors to spend a lot of time writing prescriptions for medicines to treat chronic conditions, despite the fact that, for most of these drugs, the doses and frequencies of administration do not need changing. For this reason, it is unnecessary for Polish doctors to spend their valuable time merely writing identical prescriptions. The time saved, postimplementation of a repeat dispensing service, can be more cost-effectively utilised by doctors by tending to acute patients or other medical cases that require a clinical review. The repeat dispensing system has already been introduced in many developed, West European countries. What is more, in these countries, a repeat dispensing service is one of the elements of pharmaceutical care offered by community pharmacies. In the United Kingdom, this service is offered by community pharmacies that enter into a repeat dispensing agreement with nearby medical surgeries and it is run entirely by pharmacists.

Keywords: Repeat dispensing, community pharmacy, doctors and pharmacist collaboration

© Farm Pol, 2015, 71(9): 574-585