Operating Model of Pharmacy Department, Samsung Hospital, Korea

The total operating costs of hospitals have increased over the years. The state budget has not increased much, however, the revenue from hospital fees and health insurance funds has increased over the years. The amount of money spent on drugs in hospitals has increased in both quantity and proportion compared to the total costs of hospitals over the years. This is a challenge for the pharmaceutical sector when it has to manage a large amount of funds in accordance with regulations and ensure timely treatment.

The current situation of the budget for hospitals is very limited while the funding from health insurance increases according to the contribution level of participants, but it is also very difficult while medical services are constantly developing, the list of drugs is increasingly expanding, and pharmaceutical departments always have to balance between the need for drugs and the financial capacity of the hospital.[18], [19], [20].

The lack of budget for drug purchase directly affects the quantity and quality of drugs. The first factor that determines the choice of drugs when evaluating bids is quality and treatment effectiveness, but the final factor in some cases is price. Therefore, the budget for drug purchase is an issue that needs to be considered, weighed and adjusted.

1.2.2.6. Drug and therapeutics committee

The Ministry of Health issued Circular No. 08/BYT-TT dated July 4, 1997 guiding the organization of functions and tasks of the hospital's Drug and Treatment Council to implement Directive 03/BYT-CT dated February 25, 1997 of the Minister of Health on rectifying the management and use of drugs in hospitals.

Duties of the drug and therapeutics committee [4],[7]

Develop a drug list suitable for the specific disease and the cost of drugs and treatment consumables of the hospital.

Supervise the implementation of regulations on disease diagnosis, medical record preparation and treatment prescription, drug use regulations and pharmacy department work regulations.

Monitor drug efficacy and adverse drug reactions (ADRs), learn from errors in medication use.

Organize drug information, monitor the application of new drugs in treatment.

Build a close cooperative relationship between pharmacists, doctors and nurses in which pharmacists are consultants, doctors are responsible for prescriptions and nurses are the ones who carry out medical orders.

In the composition of the Board of Directors and the Board of Management, the duties of the pharmacist of the pharmacy department include:

Pharmacist of the pharmaceutical department is vice chairman of the council and standing member.

Pharmacists in the pharmaceutical department consult with treating physicians to choose drugs to treat some serious and chronic diseases.

Introducing new drugs

The Pharmacy Department is responsible for drug information and implementing a network to monitor adverse drug reactions.


CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

DIRECTOR/DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF PHARMACY


Vice Chairman of the Board

HEAD OF PHARMACEUTICALS



NOTE

HEAD OF DEPARTMENT

GENERAL PLAN



MEDICAL

SOME FLOWERS

Figure 1.10: Composition of the Drug and Treatment Council

Activities of the drug and therapeutics committee :

Conduct regular meetings once every one to two months and when necessary, requested by the hospital director and convened by the council chairman. The vice chairman of the council - head of the Pharmacy department prepares the meeting content and sends documents to the council members before the meeting. On that basis, the council will discuss and analyze the proposed opinions. The standing committee members will synthesize and submit to the hospital director for approval and implementation decision. After 3-6-9-12 months, a preliminary and final report will be made.

The activities of the drug and therapeutics council have initially affirmed the role of the hospital pharmacy department in supporting the board of directors in enhancing the safe, rational and effective use of drugs. However, the council has not yet developed regulations to strengthen the close cooperation between pharmacists, doctors and nurses in which pharmacists are consultants, doctors are responsible for prescriptions and nurses are the ones who carry out medical orders. [54], [57], [72].


1.3. MODELS OF SOME MEDICINAL FLOWERS IN THE WORLD

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and some hospitals in developed countries, the Pharmacy department is organized as follows depending on the size of the hospital and the services provided [64], [65]:


Retail packaging of drugs

Pharmaceutical flower


Outpatient Pharmacy

Inpatient Pharmacy

After-hours pharmacy

Emergency medicine warehouse


Main medicine

Main warehouse

Preparation of infusion solution

Drug information

Pharmacy

Figure 1.11: Pharmaceutical activity model according to WHO

Main pharmaceuticals : Purchasing and inventory management by computer.

Main warehouse.

Retail and packaging department.

Combined infusion preparation room.

Inpatient pharmacy : Responsible for dispensing and managing drugs, chemicals, and consumables. The dispensing system includes three forms: ensuring drug supply according to the base. System of requesting drugs for each patient. System of dividing drugs according to dose units.

a. Numerical guarantee system

In departments such as emergency and operating rooms, drugs are often requested immediately after being prescribed. Unless there is a satellite pharmacy, drugs may not be dispensed to each patient but on a per-patient basis. Drugs used in these departments are often expensive and controlling their use is always a difficult task for the pharmacy department.

b. Drug request system for each patient

Similar to outpatient treatment. Each course of treatment is prescribed for each patient. Compared to the block-based drug dispensing model, it is convenient for pharmacists to consider the appropriateness of treatment based on each patient's drug use record kept in the pharmacy department.

The pharmacist's responsibility to the patient in controlling the use is better. This system reduces the number of times the drug is dispensed. For example: Each patient is given medicine for

A 3-day course of treatment, if the 3-day treatment continues, the personal medicine box returns to the pharmacy and is reissued.

c. Drug dispensing system according to unit dose used

This system enables more comprehensive patient care and reduces medication errors. Medications are divided into doses, each individually packaged, and placed in individual compartments for each patient. The cost of shipping medications by dose is higher than bulk packaging, but this can be offset by reducing shortages and making it easier to prevent leaks.

Inpatient pharmacy departments are sometimes divided into satellite pharmacies within the hospital. In large hospitals, satellite pharmacies are useful because they reduce the time it takes to dispense medications to patients, especially in dispensing systems that are responsible for distributing medications to individual patients. Satellite pharmacies also increase the presence of pharmacists in patient care areas, facilitating interactions between pharmacists and medical, nursing and patient staff, and fundamentally improving patient care.

Outpatient pharmacy.

Drug information unit : Ensures provision of drug information to patients and medical staff.

After-hours pharmacy : Although the need for medicine is continuous, some hospitals do not have 24-hour pharmacy service. If medicine is needed after hours, a pharmacist or nurse must be called to provide a replacement. It is necessary to limit the dispensing of medicine not done by a pharmacist and there should be checks to prevent possible errors.

Emergency medicine warehouse : Responsible for dispensing medicines for emergency care outside of working hours.

The Singapore General Hospital (SGH) pharmacy model includes [66]: :

Inpatient pharmacy :

Control and supply of drugs according to medical orders for inpatients

Satellite pharmacies serving inpatient areas

Professional advice for patients on asthma, COPD, cardiovascular disease, organ transplant, anticoagulant treatment.

Dispensing prescriptions

Control of treatment drugs

Monitoring antibiotic use according to the program

Outpatient Pharmacy:

Dispensing medicine and consulting.

Professional advice for patients on asthma, COPD, cardiovascular disease, digestive tract disease...

Drug use management.

Medicine delivery service to your home.

Hematology and Pharmacy Center : Prepares drugs to treat blood diseases, mixes cancer chemotherapy into doses for use. Dispenses and consults inpatients and outpatients.

Drug information center .

Pharmacy : providing drugs not listed, OTC drugs, drugs for outside customers.

Sterile preparation room : Preparation of parenteral nutrition infusion, ...

Operation model of pharmacy department of Samsung hospital, Korea [67]:

The pharmacy department at a 1,263-bed general hospital has a staff of 59 pharmacists, 6 resident pharmacists, 3 technicians, and 26 secondary pharmacists.



Head of Department

Deputy Director of Pharmacy

Chief pharmacist

Drug information

Main Pharmacy Management Purchasing Control Inventory Control

Prescription control

DS: 5;

Technician: 2

- Drug information

- ADR

- DS training: 2

KTV: 1; DNT: 9

- Inpatient pharmacy

- Night shift

- Simple preparation DS: 20: KTV: 16

Deputy Director, Dispensing & Preparation Deputy Director, Clinical Pharmacy


Inpatient Pharmacy

Outpatient Pharmacy

Clinical pharmacy practice

Infusion solutions


- Outpatient pharmacy DS: 9; KTV: 3

- Infusion

-CPS

nurture

- ACS

NDTH

- RS

- Chemotherapy DS:13;KTV:4

DS:5


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Operating Model of Pharmacy Department, Samsung Hospital, Korea


CPS : Pharmacokinetics Consultation ACS : Anticoagulant Consultation RS : Respiratory Medicine Consultation

Figure 1.12: Operating model of the pharmacy department of Samsung hospital, Korea


According to the above model in developed countries, the pharmacy department has 6 main departments: In charge of main pharmacy, inventory, supply; drug information; inpatient pharmacy; outpatient pharmacy; preparation of infusion solutions; clinical pharmacy practice. [65], [66], [67].

With the operating model of Samsung hospital pharmacy, the pharmacy department participates in many activities of safe and appropriate use of drugs for patients such as preparing some special infusion solutions in the hospital, drug information, consulting on drug use for chronic diseases, managing some drugs with narrow therapeutic range...

1.4. MANAGEMENT OF DRUG BIDDING AT PUBLIC HOSPITALS

Main forms of selecting drug suppliers in hospitals [31]; [40]; [41]

Table .6: Forms of bidding for drug supply


TT

Form

Apply


1


Open tender

- Applied in all hospitals in purchasing drugs on the list of essential drugs.


2


Bidding

- In special cases, rare drugs... are allowed to be imported without a Visa by the Ministry of Health (special drugs, natural disasters ... )


3


Shop online

- Apply approved bidding results within 6 months to purchase drugs.


4

Competitive Bidding

- For bidding packages with a value of less than 2 billion VND, drugs are allowed to be purchased according to additional bidding regulations due to treatment needs.

Existence and challenges in drug bidding at hospitals[45], [55].

Bidding separately at each medical service facility, not centralized as in some countries, leads to difficulty in control, so the Ministry of Health encourages health departments to bid centrally to gradually move towards national centralized bidding. [50]. That requires a higher standardization of criteria in bidding. Especially when bidding on such a large scale, to control the huge amount of information about drugs and contractors, the Ministry of Health needs to have a software program to help computerize, shorten manual work when bidding as well as help standardize drug selection in bidding to ensure the highest efficiency.

Limitations in the management capacity of staff, legal documents in the work of developing bidding plans, bidding documents, planned prices, as well as organizing bid evaluation are shown through the winning bid results: the winning bid price still fluctuates a lot, the time to complete the bidding work is prolonged, causing drug shortages.

Professional limitations: Bidding activities, standard bidding documents, and drug selection criteria in bidding evaluation still do not have specific guidance documents. The consensus on drug selection is still subjective and sometimes inaccurate.

Technical limitations: All work in bidding activities is still manual, bid evaluation takes a lot of time, human resources make bidding results slow, leading to a lack of medicine to serve the needs of medical examination and treatment. This requires computerization (building supporting software) to avoid shortages in human resources and time.

The list of drugs bid by brand name and the bidding results are subject to many negative impacts of the dominant market.

Sometimes, the price of the same winning drug item varies greatly between hospitals and between regions and areas in the country.[43], [49].

The winning bid price of some drugs is higher than the price of the same type of drug on the market at the same time. The high winning bid price is partly due to reasons such as collusion between contractors that have not been strictly controlled ...

There is no common price level for medicinal materials and vaccines, so it is difficult to manage the bidding prices for these items.[43]

Hospitals tend to choose imported drugs with increasingly high costs even though domestic drugs have been produced with the same active ingredients, good quality, and reasonable prices. Partly because domestic drug manufacturing companies have not paid enough attention and invested properly in marketing activities, building product strategies to enhance the reputation and brand of their drugs, reducing their competitive advantage when participating in bidding.

Evaluation of technical standards is not unified, treatment equivalence is almost not implemented, leading to the need to choose drugs that are already prestigious in the world despite the very high cost [45],[49],[55],[56]; .

1.5. SUMMARY OF RESEARCH TOPICS ON SUPPLY OF HOSPITAL DRUGS AND HOSPITAL PHARMACEUTICAL FLOWERS

In recent years, there have been many research topics on hospital drug supply activities conducted at Hanoi University of Pharmacy at the level of graduation thesis, master's thesis... The topics have focused on four contents of the drug supply cycle such as Friendship Hospital, Bach Mai Hospital, E Hospital.

[48], 108 Central Military Hospital, Central Hematology and Blood Transfusion Hospital, the topics have preliminarily shown that in recent years, the field of hospital drug supply has been getting better and better. Some topics have researched and partially intervened in the hospital's drug supply activities such as Do Bich Ha: Analysis and evaluation of bidding activities through surveying the bidding process and results at some hospitals in the period 2005-2007 [45]; Duong Thuy Mai's thesis initially applied information technology to support drug bidding activities at hospitals [49]... However, there are still many shortcomings that need to be improved and perfected by authorities and hospitals, and pharmaceutical departments in the following years.

Friendship Hospital is a grade 1 general hospital at the central level. In recent years, there have been a number of research topics on the hospital's drug supply activities. However, these topics have only studied some individual activities of the drug supply cycle and have not comprehensively studied the drug supply activities, found out the main shortcomings to propose solutions to improve the effectiveness of drug supply activities. Drug supply activities at Friendship Hospital are affected by many factors: human resources, facilities, operating models, disease models, etc. Drug supply bidding activities have many shortcomings that cause delays in treatment services. The topic focuses on describing the overall situation of drug supply activities at Friendship Hospital in recent years, and at the same time, implementing a number of intervention solutions in the management of toxic, addictive, psychotropic drugs and drug bidding management, thereby proposing a model of pharmacy activities and a number of solutions to improve the efficiency of drug supply activities, contributing to serving the health care for patients at Friendship Hospital.

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