The rate of extramural prescription in Nagoya Memorial Hospital is approximately 90％ and most of our patients receive medicine in health insurance pharmacies. However, there are several problems in the prescriptions for outpatients; the patients are sometimes unable to obtain the prescribed drugs because they are out of stock in the family pharmacy. In addition, community pharmacists find it difficult to instruct individual patients when obtaining information only through externally dispensed prescriptions. To improve the cooperation between our hospital and community pharmacists, we performed a questionnaire survey on the present status of cancer patients and then another on pharmacists working in health insurance pharmacies.
The first series of questionnaires showed that all patients had a family pharmacy and 92% of them agreed to give their information to it. In addition, the patients being prescribed oral cancer drugs would more often consult the community pharmacists, compared to those receiving parenteral chemotherapeutic agents. The second series of questionnaires for community pharmacists revealed that around 90% were interested in obtaining more information from their hospital, although less than one fifth of them could talk to patients undergoing cancer treatment. Based on these results, we discussed with community pharmacists and designed a communication form of cooperation. The form of cooperation was sent from the hospital to the health insurance pharmacy by FAX, after obtaining informed consent from the patients. This form is to be evaluated from the viewpoints of patients and community pharmacists and then further improved.
