From diabetes to the heart: for millions of Italians life-saving treatments in the pharmacy near their home

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For millions of Italians with chronic pathologies – from diabetes to rheumatological diseases to cardiovascular ones – a small revolution is coming that might simplify the lives of many sick people, often elderly. By March 30, the Medicines Agency will draw up a list of medicines which today can only be collected at the hospital or booked at the pharmacy, but waiting a few days for it to arrive. From April, however, patients will be able to immediately find their medications – often life-saving treatments – in their local pharmacy, with the positive effect that adherence to treatment might also increase given that it is common for the elderly, especially the elderly, to forget to take a few pills.

The news on pharmacy distribution in force from April

The new structure in the distribution of essential medicines paid by the National Health Service will allow easier and faster access to medicines, especially for chronic patients with serious pathologies – in Italy there are 22 million of which 8 million are more serious – increasing the proximity levels of assistance and ensuring homogeneity throughout the national territory. The legislative innovations for this reorganization are contained in the latest budget law and provides for the development by AIFA of this list of drugs that will arrive in pharmacies (the list will be updated every year on 30 March). “With the revision of the drug distribution process, the possibility is introduced for affiliated pharmacies to dispense drugs, previously available only in hospital facilities, overcoming old rules that are now dated and issued mainly to keep pharmaceutical spending under control”, explained the minister of health Orazio Schillaci. Which underlines how in this way we meet the «needs especially of the over 65s, the disabled, cancer patients who constitute the main users of direct distribution and who ask for an increasingly local healthcare system».

The drug is immediately available in your local pharmacy

With the new rules, in the case of medicines transferred from the so-called “Direct Distribution”, citizens will no longer have to go to the hospital pharmacy to collect the medicines, but will be able to do so in the nearest community pharmacy, under the supervision of their family doctor . Furthermore, in the case of medicines transferred from “Distribution on behalf” to “Agreement Distribution”, they will no longer have to wait for the medicine purchased by the local health authority to be ordered and arrive at the pharmacy, but will be able to receive it immediately as it is already present in the relevant community pharmacy. «AIFA is identifying the selection of medicines intended for transfer from direct or on behalf of distribution to affiliated distribution – explains the Undersecretary of Health Marcello Gemmato – and by the end of March it will draw up the list which will then be updated on an annual basis. We will start with a first group of drugs for a cost of around 200 million euros.”

With pharmacists, adherence to therapies can increase

Satisfaction from Federfarma. «We welcome the announcement of the imminent revision by AIFA of the PHT handbook (the direct distribution handbook) to make medicines easily accessible to millions of patients», he warns once more. Marco Cossolo, president of Federfarma. For whom “dispensing in pharmacies has the added value of timely monitoring of adherence to therapy with clear economic advantages for the NHS”. In fact, especially the elderly, often take multiple medications for multiple pathologies and in many cases it happens that they forget some of them (an estimated 40%). On the contrary, obtaining supplies from a trusted pharmacist might help patients not to forget the therapies they need to take. «The transfer of drug dispensing from the hospital to local pharmacies represents an important innovation for the benefit of citizens, which will make it possible to simplify access to medicines, with positive implications on therapeutic continuity and adherence to treatment», he confirms Andrea Mandellipresident of the Federation of Italian Pharmacists’ Orders.