Phone alerts created for prescriptions
The average cost has been reduced by 2.34% since 2021, says Valencia
THE REGIONAL health service has added a feature to its GVA+Salut application which sends an alert to the patient’s mobile phone when medication they have been prescribed is dispensed from a pharmacy.
The system is designed to improve security, and works like the alerts used by banks so that their clients know in real time when there are any movements in their account, a regional government spokesman explained.
The app already includes information about any treatments which chronic patients have available at the pharmacy, their upcoming prescriptions and the history of medications dispensed, so that users can check the dates and pharmacies where these were acquired.
Prescriptions are still electronic and can be obtained
simply by presenting the SIP card, so a printed copy with a bar code is no longer necessary, but it is possible to print one out if required.
And, since 2019 prescriptions for treatments for chronic patients no longer expire, so they can pick them up from a pharmacy whenever they need them, without having to wait for the right date, according to the spokesman.
Before then, the computer system generated the number of prescriptions required to cover the treatment period planned by the doctor, with set dates when they could be dispensed by pharmacies – and if three consecutive prescriptions were not used the treatment was cancelled.
That meant the patient was not able to manage their own needs and also entailed a risk of medicines accumulating in their homes.
The measures adopted to optimise use of medications have helped to contain pharmaceutical spending without reducing activity or prescriptions. In fact, last year the number of prescriptions in the Valencia region actually increased by 7.4% to 122,316,422, while the average cost of €11.69 each has been reduced by 2.34% since 2021.