Pros and Cons of Monthly Rationing of Medicine

The HSA, Johor Bahru practices rationing of medicine, meaning you are only supplied enough medicine for one month if your window of prescription spans more than a month.

I have many discussions about this system with professional friends and the consensus is as follows:-

Pros

1. The Ministry of Health does not require to stock large quantity of medicine. It is something like the practice of “just in time” in manufacturing industry.

2. It creates work for unemployed pharmacist as they require to do extra work every month, dispensing the same medicine to the same person every month, thus improving /achieving their performance in SKT.

3. It will attract more Q at the counter. The hospital can be proud to showcase their efficiency in solving the work load. In order words, the Hospital has more bargaining power in asking for more money and higher staffing when they prepare for annual budget.

4. When the patient is required to collect the medicine every month, it brings about many downstream economical activities such as:

• As the patient is required to make extra trip every month to the hospital either by driving or public transport, it indirectly thrives the viability of oil and public transport companies.

• The canteen in hospital also benefit from the influx of extra non doctor-seeking patients.

5. As most patients who require to depend on monthly ration of medicines are usually in the sunset window, most of them are either pensioners or jobless, so this monthly pilgrimage to hospital creates opportunity for them to while away their times.

6. It is observed that patients require monthly ration of medicine usually belong to those waiting for kindgom to come, therefore, by restricting the quantity of medicine dispensed, the hospital can cut wastage in case the patients answer a call from higher authority.


CONS

1. It creates unnecessary/artificial human traffic in the hospital.

2. It incurs extra financial load on pensioners / jobless as they have to spend extra money for their transport to hospital, not forgetting the wastage on petrol and the emission of carbon dioxide.


3. It creates artificial workload for the pharmacist. If a medicine can be dispensed, say, on two- or three-month interval, the pharmacist does not require to repeat the dispensing of same medicine every month but once in every two or three months. If the workload of pharmacist is reduced, then the justification for higher staffing of pharmacist can not be valid.

4. As most patients are suffering from the problem of mobility, they are usually required to be accompanied by their family members or friends in the collection of medicine. Some even may require to take leave in order to render this service. Clearly, the hospital does not take this into consideration.

5. Of course, the hospital argues that they provides sms and postal services for the delivery of medicine, I wonder , hitherto, how many patients make use of these activities.

Of course, the above lists are not exhaustive, I welcome more input from innovative readers.