Browsing by Subject "price counselling"

The Finnish medicine reimbursement system is complex and several different conditions required by the Health Insurance Act (1224/2004) and the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) must be met in order to receive medicine reimbursement. The understanding of medicine reimbursement criteria from the perspective of medicine users has not been studied in Finland before, and little research has been done on the subject internationally. Medicine user-oriented research on the medicine reimbursement system, both in Finland and internationally, has largely focused on the financial opportunities of medicine users to purchase medicines and their opinions on the fairness of medicine reimbursements. The aim of this study was to obtain information on the understanding of medicine reimbursement criteria and the background factors affecting it, the implementation of price, generic substitution and medicine reimbursement counselling in pharmacies, seeking advice on medicine reimbursement, and the financial difficulties of buying prescription medicines. The material used in this study was from the population survey (n=1650), which examined the activation of price competition for pharmaceutical products and customers' expectations of pharmacy operations. The understanding of medicine reimbursement criteria, the price counselling provided in a pharmacy, the effect of financial challenges on the non-buying of medicines and the use of sources of advice related to the medicine reimbursement were described as frequency distributions. The effect of background factors on the understanding of medicine reimbursement criteria was compared using the chi-square test and logistic regression analysis. About a third (31%) of respondents told that they do not understand the basis on which medicine reimbursement is usually received for prescription medicines, and 13% had unclear why they had not been reimbursed for their prescription medicine in the past year. Especially younger age, low income, low medication use, depression and other mental health problems, lack of long-term illness, and insufficient medicine reimbursement counselling in a pharmacy were found to be associated with poorer understanding of medicine reimbursement. 72% of the participants in the study felt that they usually receive sufficient information about the prices of medicines and 61% about the reimbursement of medicines when buying prescription medicines from a pharmacy. Less than half (47%) of respondents felt that they have usually received sufficient information about how the amount of reimbursement for medicines is determined. Slightly over 70% of respondents said that they are usually told about the cheapest medicine available when buying a prescription medicine and/or are suggested to switch to a cheaper one. About 60% were usually told about the difference between the two interchangeable medicines. 88% of respondents would seek information about medicine reimbursement primarily from a pharmacy or pharmacy´s online services. About 3% of all respondents in the study had not bought a medicine prescribed by a doctor for financial reasons in the last six months. Based on the study, about a third of medicine users have remained unclear regarding medicine reimbursements, and not everyone feels that they have received sufficient counselling and information about medicine prices and medicine reimbursements when buying prescription medicines from a pharmacy. Counselling from a pharmacy was found to be related to understanding of medicine reimbursement criteria. Advise on the pricing, medicine reimbursement and generic substitution should continue to be actively provided to medicine users, so that the counselling meets the requirements of the law and the knowledge of the reimbursement system of medicine users can be improved. Based on the results of this study, counselling should be targeted in particular at younger, low-income and from mental health problems suffering medicine users, as well as those who are less familiar with reimbursement issues, for example due to low morbidity or medicine use.