Filenews 27 Decmber 2023 - by Marilena Panayi
An end to the transfer, by patients themselves, of specialized medicines from pharmacies to doctors' offices (or hospitals, depending on treatment) is trying to put a Ministry of Health and a Health Insurance Organization. They promote, in particular, an amendment to the legislation to give doctors the right to procure themselves the treatments their patients need and then administer them through their practices.
The relevant amendment to the Pharmaceutical and Poisons Law was put to public consultation, with the aim of forwarding it to Parliament for voting as soon as possible.
As stated in the explanatory memorandum accompanying the amendment: 'Under the current regime, patients are subjected to additional inconvenience since in many cases they have to present the medicinal products to be supplied to them themselves, after obtaining a prescription and obtaining them from a pharmacy. In addition, the transport of medicinal products by patients poses risks to the stability and safety of the preparations, if the proper storage of these preparations (e.g. temperature) is not ensured."
Simply put, today patients who receive this type of medication are forced to visit their doctor, issue them a prescription, go to pharmacies, take their medicines and then go to hospitals or doctor's offices to receive their treatment.
With the proposed amendment, doctors will procure themselves, directly from the supplier, the medicines their patients need and patients will simply go to the place where they receive their treatment.
Under current legislation, doctors can only obtain vaccines and medical oxygen cylinders directly from suppliers.
"The amendment in question, which is made at the request of the Health Insurance Organisation (HIO) to the Ministry of Health, introduces provisions so that certain (defined) specialized pharmaceutical products can be distributed directly to doctors."
These are treatments that concern preparations "administered only under the supervision of a physician. Indicatively, this includes products for intravitreal and subcutaneous injections, intravesical injections for ophthalmic, neurological and psychiatric diseases, as well as contrast agents and radiopharmaceuticals."
As the Ministry of Health points out, "under the current regime, visits to specialist doctors are increasing, who in many cases (depending on treatment) have to go to hospitals themselves to administer pharmaceutical products, a fact for which they spend time and burden the General Health System with additional costs."
Concluding its explanatory memorandum, the Ministry of Health notes that "after the passage of the final bill, the Medicines Council should allow holders of wholesale drug distribution licenses to deactivate the unique identifier of products before distributing them to doctors' offices."
Stakeholders had until 23 December to submit their comments. The comments will be studied by the Ministry of Health and the final text of the bill will be sent to the Legal Service for legislative scrutiny, before being submitted to Parliament for a vote.
