Pharmacies in Turkey are being reimbursed for some prescriptions within one week rather than two months following the introduction of an internet based processing system, a valuable income boost in Turkey's high inflation economy.
Emekli Sandigi (ES), a social security organisation for public sector pensioners and dependents, has worked with IBM on the new system, which handles around 15m prescription items a year dispensed from 15,000 pharmacies.
When a Turkish pharmacy dispenses a prescription for an ES member, a price label and barcode is detached from the medicine and sent with the prescription form to ES for processing. Processing and payment were taking one to two months to complete using the old manual system.
Under the computerised system, patients have health cards - booklets containing their names, social security numbers, photographs and around 50 self-copying pages on which doctors write the prescriptions. Pharmacists can access the ES system over the internet and check the validity of the card and calculate the remuneration for the prescription. Prices of medicines are held for 15 different dates because of the high rate of inflation in Turkey.
The system also calculates the payment to be made by the patient, typically 10 per cent of the price, depending on the medicine prescribed and the condition being treated.
The system holds data on drug dosages and periods of use and can alert the pharmacist if the dosage prescribed appears to be too high. Details of previous prescriptions dispensed are available.
Trials of the system started in 1997 and by March, 1998, around 800 pharmacies in the Turkish capital, Ankara, were connected. The system now has around 15,000 users, about 80 per cent of all pharmacies in Turkey.
The total cost of the project so far has been $8m (£5.3m), but ES expects to save around 10 per cent of turnover previously lost due to payment errors. The final goal is the replacement of the 2m health cards with smart cards. These are expected to pay for themselves within two years. The system is to be extended to cover opticians, hospitals and prosthesis retailers.