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Assessment of time for customer on pharmacy billing

Assessment of time for customer on pharmacy billing

Author: POOJATARANGINI KUNA

Introduction: To identify the dispensing procedure at a pharmacy investigate the possible operational problems that may lead to excessive patient waiting for items as prescriptions are filled and examine patient disposition to perceived delays at the pharmacy.

Object: The object of this study was to identify current pharmacist-provided healthcare services and pharmacist perceived barrier to providing and billing for these services.

Basic knowledge on billing:

Dispensing workload is widely perceived by pharmacist as limiting the time available for customers contact. This study compared pharmacist work patterns at two neighbouring independent pharmacies, one without(A) and one with (B) a trained dispensing technician, using fixed interval activity sampling.

Pharmacists are one of the crucial focal points for health care in the community. They have tremendous outreach to the public as pharmacies are often the first port of call. With the increase of ready-to-use drugs, the main health-related activity of a pharmacist. Today is to assure the quality of dispensing. A key element to promote rational medical use.

Dispensing without prescription at pharmacies was 45% of the total dispensing encounters and significantly higher (x2=15.2, p<0.001, df=1) in pharmacies of residential areas (46.64%). Analgesics were the most commonly dispensed drugs(90%) without prescription. Only 31% instead on dispensed full course of antibiotics prescribed and 19% checked fir completeness of prescription before dispensing. Although 97% if the pharmacies had a refrigerator, 31% of these didn’t have power backup. Only 50% of the pharmacists were aware of schedule H.

This study shows a high proportion of dispensing encounters without prescription, a high rate of older prescription refills, many irregularities in medication counselling and unsatisfactory storage practices. It also revealed that about half of the pharmacists were unaware of schedule H and majority of them about current regulations. Hence regulatory enforcement  and educational campaigns are a prerequisite to improve dispensers knowledge and dispensing practices

A pharmacy database for tracking drug costs and physician prescribing trends is described.

Accuracy problems plagued data systems to make drug use policy decisions at a tertiary care teaching hospital because of structural deficiencies within the system and their nonclinical orientation. To resolve these problems a programmer analyst, a clinical supervisor, and a clinical pharmacist developed a hierarchical database of drug costs. The database was designed to be valid for tracking drug costs according to patterns of clinical use.

Internal controls were created that could identify and correct cost tabulation errors arising within the ordering, order entry and billing processes. The database was able to tabulate drugs cost according to clinical service on which the patient was being treated at the time. So that reported should compare aggregate prescribing trends for one time period to another for the same service. Similarly the database could track and report drug use by disease and financial classification.

Most pharmacists report that they already provide non dispensing services, desired to implement new services, and had confidence in their teams ability to handle new services. Time and resources were the most cited barriers to provide new services; compensation, company support and education were the most cited barriers to billing for services.

Conclusion:

A mechanism to improve the ability of pharmacists to generate clinical revenue already through remains considerable uncertainty regarding the criteria for incident to billing, although these remains considerable uncertainty regarding the criteria for incident to billing and specifically how the pharmacist can use these model to capture revenue for clinical services. In this article, we discuss incident-to-billing criteria as it pertains to outpatient clinics common misconceptions related to incident-to-billing and how clinical pharmacists may use the mechanism to generate revenue for the clinical services to provide.

References:

1. Bruce W. Chaffee, pharm. D,, Kevin A. Townsend, pharm. D,, BCPS, Todd Benner, Richard F. De Leon, pharm. D
   American Journal of health-system pharmacy, volume 57, Issue7, 1 April 2000, pages 669-676
   https://doi.org/10.1093/ajhp/57.7.669
2. Michael A. Biddle, Jr, pharmD, BCPS, kailyn k. Cleveland., pharmD, shanna k. O’connor, pharmD, BCACP, Hayli Hruza, MPH, Madeline Foster, Elaine Nguuyen, pharmD, MPH, BCPS, BCACP, Reene Robinson, pharmD, MPH, MSpharm, and Thomas wadsworth, pharmD, BCPS
   Volome37, Issue 4
   https://doi.org/10.1177/87551225211021187
3. volume 24 Issue(12)
   Eric Dietrich. PharmD, BCPS, CPC-A’, John G. Gums, PharmD, FCCP
   University of Florida College of pharmacy, Gainesville
   J Manag care spec pharm, 2018 Dec;24(12):1273-1276.
   https://doi.org/10.18553/jmcp.2018.24.12.1273
4. Margaret O Afolabi
   Department of clinical pharmacy and pharmacy administration, Obafemi Awolowo university, lle-lfe, Nigeria.
   Wilson O Erhun
   Department of clinical pharmacy and pharmacy administration, Obafemi Awolowo university, lle-lfe, Nigeria.
   DOI:10.4314/tjpr.v2i2.14601