95% of govt dispensaries serve patients within 30 minutes

Star: PETALING JAYA: Almost 95.4% of the 39.4 million prescriptions for outpatients at government hospitals and clinics last year were dispensed in less than 30 minutes, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Ismail Merican said yesterday.
He said 93% of government hospitals and clinics achieved the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) set by the Health Ministry to ensure that waiting times at pharmacies be under 30 minutes.
Dr Ismail also said that pharmacy services were now more patient-oriented to ensure medicines dispensed were safe, of quality and effective.
This, he said, was done through special services like clinical pharmacokinetics, nutritional support, oncology pharmacy and nuclear pharmacy.
“Medicine prescribed through these special services are based on individual needs which could improve the quality of treatment and reduce any side-effect,” he said in a statement.
Dr Ismail also said that 74 main hospitals, 62 specialist hospitals, 14 district hospitals and 37 health clinics nationwide had implemented the Medication Therapy Adherence Clinic programme.
The programme allows for optimum compliance on medication dispensing to avert complications in patients.
The pharmacy services had also implemented new methods for drug dispensing such as the Integrated Drug Dispensing System, drive-through pharmacy, SMS alerts and appointment cards to make it easier for patients to get their medicine supply.
He said 87 hospitals and 38 clinics were now offering these services to their patients.
Dr Ismail said the SMS alert service had received good response from patients, whereby they were only required to send a text message to a government pharmacy before picking up their medication.
Last year, the Integrated Drug Dispensing System handled 115,086 prescriptions.
“The system enables patients to obtain their medicines from any hospital or clinic of their choice,” he said.