Practice for promoting proper use of reusing the leftover medicines in the outpatients of the chronic disease

Abstract

Cooperating with hospitals and clinics, the current situation of leftover medicines for outpatients was investigated. Pharmacies played a role in receiving and counting leftover medicines. Pharmacists reported the number of leftover medicines to physicians and facilitated a decrease in the dosing days of prescriptions for the purpose of reusing leftover medicines. Our study, conducted from March 2003 to July 2003 in three pharmacies, found that the saved drug cost and pharmacist technical fees was 489830 yen. There was an income decrease of 69080 yen to the pharmacies. If, as we found in our study, an average medication savings of 40000 yen per pharmacy-month represents a conservative estimate, the total national cost due to medication saving would nearly 20 billion yen per year. The rate of forgetting to take medicine rose as the dosing frequency increased. With a dose of three times a day before every meal, the forgetting probability was 100%. © 2004 The Pharmaceutical Society of Japan.