Description
Pharmacy Department at University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) has introduced medication delivery by post since 2010 under the unit called ‘PharmCARE'. This service aims to address congestion and long waiting time at the Outpatient Pharmacy and at the same time to improve patients' convenience in refilling their long-term prescriptions. However, only 7% of eligible patients use this service, making this service underutilized. To address this issue, an improvement study was initiated. The main factors in the low medication postal service utilization are identified, which include requests of postal service that can only be made during office hours and that cold-chain medications are not included in the postal service. Thus, we collaborated with UMMC IT department to innovate an in-house online platform that enables medication refill requests by patients at any time and one that facilitates pharmacy workflow. This platform integrates with the hospital information system that updates patients' address and payment records. We also engaged with a pharmacists-based company for cold chain medication deliveries, where the live medication temperature is monitored and recorded. These improvements have significantly increased the use of postal service, further reducing the congestion at the Outpatient Pharmacy and improve work process's efficiency.
Highlights
The innovation in medication postal delivery service involved developing an in-house online platform and engaging with a pharmacists-based company for cold chain medication deliveries. In-house online platform for streamlining medication delivery service: Pharmacy team collaborated with our hospital's IT Department to create an online platform for patients to request medication refills at any time. This platform called ‘Post Medication' is created in the hospital's Single Sign On (SSO), an existing account that is accessible by staff and patients to check their clinic appointment dates and do self-check ins when the appointment is due. The ‘Post Medication' module is integrated with Patient Demographic Record that allows patients to confirm their auto-populated delivery address and contact numbers before requesting for medications. It's also linked with clinic visitation records that enable patients to refill medications according to specific clinic, for example dermatology clinic medication refill or diabetic clinic medication refill. As part of control measure, patients may only request to refill medications from clinics with existing follow-up dates. Patients do not have to upload prescriptions or type in medications names. This information is available to the pharmacy staff from the patient's Hospital Medication Record. Thus, patients can immediately submit the medication delivery request at this point. The delivery requests received by the system will be stratified to either subsidized or paying patient category. Patients who are flagged as paying patients will be informed on the due payment amount via email notification with the payment link. Updated payment status will be displayed for pharmacy staff's further action to prepare the medications. For every new prescription, patients only need to request medication delivery for one time only and the subsequent refills will be posted automatically until the patient's follow-up appointment with his or her clinic. For example, if the patient has a prescription that is valid one year until the next clinic follow up, he will request to post medication just once, and the pharmacy will deliver medications by post every two or three months until the supply is completed for the one-year duration without the patient having to request multiple times. Engagement with pharmacists-based company for cold chain medication deliveries. To expand the service in including delivery of cold chain medications, the pharmacy team engaged with a pharmacists-based company who provides temperature monitoring of the medications. Cold chain medications like insulins and eye drops will be prepared in the mornings and inserted in customized bags with ice packs before being delivered by the courier on the same day within the Klang Valley area. Result Prior to the changes, the number of deliveries in 2019 was 14,357. After the improvements that take place from June 2020 until December 2021, the number of deliveries has increased 155% to 36,612 deliveries in 2022. In terms of efficiency, the innovation has reduced request processing time from 10 minutes to 5 minutes per request, releasing valuable resources and capacity to cater to more patients. Now, both room temperature and cold chain medications can be delivered to patients' doorsteps.
Contact Person/Inventor
Name | Contact Phone | |
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NUR AZRIDA BINTI AZHARI WASI | azrida@ummc.edu.my | 60182093188 |
Award
Award Title | Award Achievement | Award Year Received |
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Malaysian Technology Expo | MTE 2023 | 2023 |
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