The Futuro Professional Association acts as a promoter of the ‘Future Connections Study I: Bringing Healthcare Establishments Closer to Community Pharmacies’. It is an “observational, cross-sectional and non-interventional” investigation, they explain from the unit, which will begin with the collection of data on Monday, May 29, and aims to analyze the reasons for patient referrals from pharmacies. Doctors in the community of Madrid to take care of primary, specialist or emergency doctors.
In their day-to-day community pharmacists face barriers that make it impossible for them to meet their legal obligation to provide essential medicines to patients, and that their doctors want them to be spared. Previous studies suggest that the problem arises because these patients most of the time require new prescriptions or new diagnoses, the competencies of doctors.
Faced with this situation and the lack of communication, coordination and cooperation between Madrid pharmacies and health center health workers, pharmacists are usually forced to make a referral to a primary care center, so that the patient can to be seen by a doctor. This is seriously detrimental to the patient, who, due to not having the medicine, delays or even disrupts the start of treatment, and is forced to request a new appointment and visit the health facility once again. is forced. The implications of this situation are clear, and not only of a health but economic and social nature as well.
The Futuro Association wants to find a solution that will help to solve this situation, and for this reason it has prepared a research study divided into two parts. The first, which will start this month of May, consists of conducting a descriptive and quantitative analysis of the events that occur daily in Madrid community pharmacies that prevent the dispensing of medicines. Futuro has started recruiting researchers, so community pharmacists who want to participate need to fill out this form. After analyzing the results of the first phase, the second phase (‘Future Connection II’) will begin, where a group of medical and pharmaceutical experts will draw up a series of proposals to address these problems and improve citizen care.
This study is supported by the Association of Pharmacy Entrepreneurs of Madrid (Adefarma) and the Spanish Society of Rural Pharmacy (Sefar) and is authorized by the Drug Research Ethics Committee of Puerta de Hierro Majadahonda University Hospital.
Problem condemned by Sefac
As we have published from EG, the fact that the community pharmacist cannot dispense medicines due to circumstances that have nothing to do with the patient himself is one of the great fronts that the Spanish Society of Clinical, Family and Community Pharmacy Standards (Sefac): Consensus pharmaceutical interventions for exceptional delivery to address problems of access to treatment.
SAFEK has carried out pilot tests in several autonomous communities that show the various phenomena that can be ameliorated through the said extraordinary arrangement and will also help to unburden the health system, especially in times of shortage and over supply. The shortage is increasing continuously.
Since the Society, in the absence of a national study, has carried out two pilots in Asturias and Aragón to find out the circumstances that make it impossible for a patient to withdraw the drug. There are mainly five risk factors for access to treatment. The most common circumstance is prescription expiration, which includes both a chronic treatment and a first dispensation—on more than 50 percent of occasions. The second reason is the absence or invalidity of the prescription, where some data is missing – close to 20 percent -. The third reason is insufficient dosage, the drug -13 percent is not enough to complete the treatment. Then we find the shortfall, in cases where the drug is not substitutable—with 10 percent—. Finally, we find the dosage form insufficient, as are the cases in which the patient has difficulties – less than 5 percent -.
