The Success of Near-home Medicine Pick-up Project According to New Normal Medical Service Measure in Nakhon Pathom Province

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose was to determine the success of Near-home Medicine Pick-up Projects to new normal medical service measure in Nakhon Pathom Province, including “Medicine Pick-up at a Type 1 Pharmacy Project and Happily & Safety Continuously Medicine Pick-up Apart from Covid-19.

Methods: This descriptive study was designed to determine the success of two projects including Near-home Medicine Pick-up Projects according to new normal medical services. The first was “Medicine Pick-up at a Type 1 Pharmacy Project”. Inclusion criteria for patients in the project were diabetes, hypertension, asthma, and psychiatric disorders who had a good control and were sequentially enrolled to pick-up medicines at eight drugstores’ network. Where the medicines were distributed from the main hospital. The second project was “Happily & Safety Continuously Medicine Pick-up Apart from Covid-19”. The inclusion criteria were all outpatient clinics and patients who had the good control disease with non-complications. Doctor could re-medicine based on laboratory latest result. Consequently, patients could pick-up their own medicines at Wat-Pailom Primary Care Unit and eight drugstores’ network. We collected all data since March 2020 to August 2020. The outcomes of projects were measured from amounts of outpatients who visited Nakhonpathom Hospital and patients who attended the Near-home projects. We also measured the quality success outcomes with waiting-time of medicine pick-up in the hospital and outpatient satisfaction..   These projects applied the principles new normal medical service to reduce opportunity of infection in patients, relatives, and staffs in Nakhonpathom Hospital, whereas patients still received the standard hospital services and medication safety. The study used objective-based evaluation according to the Tyler’s model method. Research tools were patient visited questionnaire, waiting time questionnaire, satisfaction questionnaire, and Tyler’s method for measuring overall projects. We used statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation for patient characteristics. Chi-square test and t test were applied to compare pre and post-project data. 

Results: We collected data of Near-home Medicine Pick-up Projects from March to August 2020. Nakhonpathom Hospital transferred patients to 8 pharmacies with 2,037 prescriptions (0.4 as a percentage of all outpatient prescriptions). Out-patient waiting-time decrease significantly compared to pre-project. In the same way, mean outpatients’ satisfaction was found to increase significantly compared to pre-project.

Conclusions: The results can verify the objective achievement of the projects. Even though there were some negative impacts to some patients but the researcher has monitored, measured, and solved the problems successively.