Taichung Armed Forces General Hospital

The National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) strives to fulfill its goal to avoid wasting resources. The NHIA created the NHI PharmaCloud system in July 2013 and also subsidized network bandwidth while at the same time reinforcing the promotion so that physicians at healthcare facilities can check medication records of patients for the past three months within 15 seconds. The system helps patients avoid getting drugs containing identical ingredients as a result of repeated visits and possible interactions among the drugs to ensure medication safety on the one hand and avoid unnecessary waste of medical resources on the other hand.

Statistics show that as of the end of November 2015, the number of patients with their medication records being checked by physicians through the NHI PharmaCloud system already reached 17.82 million and the records have been checked 4.2 times for every 10 visits. In July this year (2015), the NHIA went on to introduce verification and deletion of payments for repeated prescriptions or reconstituted drugs at the same facility and communicate to the general public that they should be responsible for losing drugs. The drugs which had been lost by patients will no longer be covered by the National Health Insurance. With these two measures, it will help avoid inappropriate medication expenditures.

For the six major categories of drugs that are commonly used, including drugs treating the three-highs, tranquillizers and sedatives, anti-depressants, and anti-early psychosis drugs, payments available for repeated dispensing were already reduced from nearly NTD 100 million in the first quarter of 2015 to around NTD 27 million in the third quarter of 2015. Efforts to deal with the cost of drugs resulting from repeated dispensing will continue in July next year. It is foreseeable that there will be better management efficacy in the future against waste of medical care resources for drugs. The NHIA calls upon physicians to take advantage of the NHI PharmaCloud system and prescribe drugs carefully in order to minimize repeated drugs being provided to patients at different facilities. All citizens should also work together to treasure our medical resources.