Regional Medical Care Coordination—What is the Best way for Pharmacists to Work with the Community?

Abstract

  In the future, home medical care will become increasingly significant. The Heisei 24 annual budget request included 2,000,000,000 yen for “the base pharmacy service which provides home medical care,” more is anticipated, and greater expectations are attached to activity in the area of the pharmacist. However, as to the actual setting of this care, home medical care provided by pharmacists is still lacking. The community-based pharmacist is pursued and supported by the pharmaceutical business, and deals with issues of patient compatibility. Therefore, in the current pharmacy model, concern with home patients is not adequate. Also, as regards home medical care, the problem is not only with the community-based pharmacist. For medicine prescribed in a hospital to a patient for home medical care, it is a hospital-based pharmacist that serves as a bridge. However, hospital-based pharmacists are constantly tasked with multiple in-hospital business functions, so in this present situation, the pharmacist's concern with home care is minimal. There should be cooperation between pharmacists concerned with treatment at home, discussion of how to introduce ideas based on cooperative medicine in the area, and so on, as regards the actual state of the conference. This would lead to the realization that “medical treatment without a break in care” would involve patients leaving the hospital, and assuring continued medical/pharmaceutical oversight, with a medical exchange as an example.