Potential Savings In South Africa Health Care Costs

In South Africa, the treatment of minor, self-limiting ailments by the community pharmacist results in an annual saving in health care expenditure of between 327 million rand ($89.7 million) and 1.16 billion rand ($318.6 million), according to Prof A Dreyer, head of pharmacy practice at Potchefstroom University. The health care bill could be reduced by a further 124 million rand a year via pharmaceutical care and intervention by community pharmacists, he suggested.

This potential saving could be effected if a single prescription intervention occurred daily in every community pharmacy in the country, he told the recent annual conference of the Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa.

Prof Dreyer attempted to determine pharmacists' contribution towards health care in order to show actual added value of pharmacy practice, as pharmacy in South Africa is moving away from profit on sales of medicines to the principle of remuneration for value-added service. This could serve as a basis for justifying reimbursement. He investigated the incidence, extent and outcome of interventions by community pharmacists with respect to the supply of prescription and non-prescription medicine as well as the carrying out of screening tests, and estimated the benefits of this intervention in economic and health care terms.