Efforts to Reduce Medical Costs by Pharmacists Focusing on Residual Medicine

Abstract

Pharmacy pharmacists are expected to contribute to the optimization of healthcare costs by reducing drug costs with a focus on remaining drugs. In this study, we investigated the interventions to reduce remaining medication at 44 of our insurance pharmacies located in six prefectures in Tohoku from November 2018 to January 2019, clarified the breakdown of reduced medications and associated pharmaceutical management fees, and verified the effectiveness of pharmacy pharmacists in reducing medical costs. The results showed a reduction in medical costs of 16,361.1 yen per store per month. Based on these results, it is estimated that if all insurance pharmacies were to achieve the same reduction effect, the approximately 1,000 pharmacies in our company would contribute to an annual reduction of 196 million yen, and the approximately 59,613 pharmacies nationwide would contribute to an annual reduction of 11.7 billion yen in medical costs. The most common reasons for the occurrence of leftover medication are forgetting to take medication, self-adjustment, and discrepancies between the date of consultation and the number of prescription days, in that order. The results suggest that pharmacy pharmacists can make a contribution to reducing medical costs by not only making adjustments after confirming leftover medication, but also intervening to prevent leftover medication.