Run-in problems for the prescription with active ingredient introduced in August by the spending review amid controversy and skepticism. The main drawbacks concern Sogei's electronic recipe system, which is adequate for incorporating the provisions of the law (also translated into the guidelines recently distributed to software houses) but far from faithful to the cases envisaged by the legislation. Basically, when the doctor prescribes with Aic (ie specifies the name of the equivalent to be dispensed, branded or generic) the system imposes the use of the wording "non-replaceable" and then obliges to justify it. "That's not what the law says," he observes Guido Marinoni, Fimmg representative at the technical table on active ingredient prescription set up by the Ministry of Health «in the case of a chronic patient with therapy already started, in fact, the doctor can continue to prescribe the drug already in use, indicating or not the non-substitutability, in this case without the need for reasons".
The inconvenience is not dramatic, because the doctor who prescribes through the "filter" of a management system sees an error signal arriving but still manages to complete the procedure. Using Sogei's "web application", on the other hand, the prescription would be aborted. "The use of this application is very limited" continues Marinoni "but in any case the bug must be fixed: not only we and Fnomceo are asking for it, the Regions have also reported it".
But this is not the only problem at the moment. Some thorns also come from the equivalence list that Aifa has recently released to support the prescription with an active ingredient. And which not only includes "off patents", but also drugs with patents still in force. "The spending review rule should only concern equivalents" Marinoni intervenes again "so it is not clear what the others in the list are doing: the doctor who prescribes a patented specialty is not bound by the cases established by law". Also in this case, the request of doctors and Regions (as well as of producers) is that the error be quickly recovered. Meanwhile, there are those who suspect that behind the "oversight" there may be a plan to gradually push doctors to only prescribe with the active ingredient.
September 21, 2012 - DoctorNews
Race to retouch the Health decree
21/09/2012
The sun 24 hours
In Parliament. The first requests from the Social Affairs Commission.
