From today, new rules for filling prescriptions. What exactly are the changes and who do they affect?

On February 28, the Ministry of Health issued a statement on changes regarding the fulfillment of prescriptions, which come into force today (March 1, 2024). These modifications will apply to patients who struggle with chronic diseases. Pharmacists will no longer have to think on their own about the amount of medicine they should sell to a patient in connection with a prescription.

What exactly are the changes in prescription filling?

The Ministry of Health announced that from March 1, 2024, the provisions of Art. 96a section 7ab of the Pharmaceutical Law Act. This article states that “calculation of the quantity of a medicinal product, food for particular nutritional uses or medical device intended to be distributed to a patient under the principles referred to in section 7a and 7aa, with the exception of the quantity of a prescription drug and the quantity of a medicinal product, food for particular nutritional uses or a medical device intended for use for a period not longer than 120 days, is performed by the IT system referred to in Art. 7 section 1 of the Act of 28 April 2011 on the health care information system.

In practice this means that the obligation to convert the amount of dispensed food medicine or medical device is transferred from the person filling the prescription to the IT system. At the beginning of March, the pharmacist will no longer be responsible for correctly calculating the amount of medicine sold to the patient.

Who is affected by modifications to prescription filling?

These changes concern the fulfillment of annual prescriptions. They are given to people struggling with chronic diseases. In such cases, the doctor may write a prescription that will be valid for the next 365 days. However, you must remember that current regulations allow you to purchase only part of the medicine. As part of an annual prescription, the patient can purchase a supply of the drug for only 120 days. Such a person must return for the next packages in the next 3 months. “The patient may receive the next amount of the medicinal product, food for particular nutritional purposes or medical device necessary for the next 120-day period of use after 3/4 of the period for which the prescription has been filled,” we read in the announcement published by the Ministry of Health.

It is also worth recalling that recently the government planned to withdraw the annual prescription, but in July 2023 the Ministry of Health announced that annual prescriptions will remain.

What other changes has the Ministry of Health introduced?

Several other changes have also been made to the health care system in recent months. One of them involves expanding the group that can see a doctor “without queuing”. The group of people who are entitled to use health services out of turn has been expanded to include people who have been granted compensation benefits for damages.

What changes await patients? This concerns the implementation of a new method of reporting by Primary Health Care (POZ) departments – at the beginning of March, they were obliged to provide codes of comorbidities indicating the patient's diagnosed chronic disease. Modifications are also to come into force that will allow the National Health Fund to more effectively monitor the quality and effectiveness of oncological treatment, consisting in changes in information about cancer.