Prescription audit likely in hospitals

BHUBANESWAR: With drug management and distribution system in the hospitals under scanner following the sensational revelations of expired saline being administered to patients at the SCB Medical College and Hospital Cuttack, the Government is mulling introduction of prescription audit in the institutions to counter the menace.   Prescription auditing entails examination of the prescribing patterns along with movement of drugs and medicines in the hospitals. It works on the objectives of improving drug and medicine management system by keeping a tab on excess use or misuse of drugs and flow of drugs from hospital stores to the patients in the wards or outdoors. It would also provide  clear data on the drugs requirement in the community for planning proper drug selection and procurement.  The urgency, however, stems from the fact there is no scrutiny or assessment of the use of drugs procured by the State for free supply to patients, who are admitted to or report at the hospitals in times of illness.     Despite procurement and supply of at least 290 essential drugs for free supply to patients, the over-riding tendency among doctors to prescribe medicine brands rather than generic names. This results in patients getting medicines from outside while the same compositions are available in the hospital store.    “As a result, substantial quantity of medicines are found left in the hospital store unused. Coupled with the laxity and negligence of staff, the possibility of intermixing of expired drugs with valid ones looms large as was found to have happened in SCB”, Health Minister Prasanna Acharya said.  The thrust of of the prescription audit would be to ensure that doctors in Government hospitals prescribe drugs by generic names so that they can be supplied from the hospital stores, the Minister added.  Meanwhile, the biometric card attendance system for doctors in the Government hospitals could be introduced as early as next month. The system is to be first put up at the three medical college and hospitals at Cuttack, Burla and Berhampur and gradually expanded to the district headquarter hospitals and downwards.  The move, aimed at ensuring timely and regular attendance in the hospitals of the state, has so far found stiff resistance among the doctors, who have termed it akin to oppression.