The Valencia Ministry of Health has activated a new functionality in the GVA +Salut mobile phone application so that patients receive a notification on their mobile phone when they pick up their prescribed medication at the pharmacy.
The system seeks to optimise security in the dispensing of drugs, and emulates the alert mechanism that banks offer their customers so that they can be informed in real time of the status of their accounts, latest movements, cash withdrawals at the ATM or card payments, to give several examples.
The improvement is aligned with other functions that are already operational in the application with the aim of promoting the autonomy and responsibility of citizens and contributing to the proper use of medicines and health products.
Specifically, the app already incorporates information on the treatments that chronic patients have available at the pharmacy, their upcoming prescriptions and the history of dispensations made, so that the interested party can keep track of the dates and pharmaceutical offices where they have purchased each medication.
The mechanics to withdraw the treatment in the pharmacy remains the same: the electronic prescription is still valid, so that it is enough to present the SIP card, it is not necessary to take the printed sheet with the barcode (although there is the possibility of printing it if the person wants).
In addition, since 2019, the prescriptions that are generated when prescribing a treatment for a chronic patient do not have an expiration date. In this way, the person can pick up the medication from the pharmacy when they need it, without having to pay attention to the calendar. Before that date, when prescribing a treatment, the number of prescriptions necessary to cover the period planned by the doctor was generated by computer, with predetermined dates for their withdrawal at the pharmacy.
This circumstance forced citizens to keep an eye on the calendar, forced them to collect the medication on specific dates and, if they did not use three prescriptions in a row, the treatment was cancelled.
In that scenario, the patient was not autonomous in managing their needs, while there was a risk of accumulating medications at home.
The measures adopted to reverse this situation and promote the optimal use of medicines have allowed the growth of prescription pharmaceutical spending in the Valencian Community to be contained, but without cutting activity or benefits since, at the same time, an increase has been achieved in the number of prescriptions prescribed and a reduction in the cost per prescription.
In quantitative terms, last year, the number of prescriptions increased by 7.4% (122,316,422 prescriptions) with an average cost of 11.69 euro/prescription, 2.34% lower than the average cost of 2021 (11 .97 euro).
In other words, the prescription and delivery to the patient have been facilitated, with a growth in the number of prescriptions, but the increase in spending has slowed down considerably, and this efficient management contributes to the sustainability of the system.
