Prof. Dr. Satibi, M.Si., Apt., as UGM Lecturer at the Faculty of Pharmacy, was inaugurated as a Professor in Pharmacy Management at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Universitas Gadjah Mada on Thursday (18/2), at the Senate Hall. In a speech inaugurating the professor position entitled Ensuring Drug Availability in the Era of National Health Insurance, Satibi stated that there was still a barrier regarding the plans for drug needs in the middle of the national health insurance (JKN) era. Although every health facility is required to make a drug need plan, the plans were only reporting formality and do not yet describe the real needs from health facilities’ occurred.
“Drug planning in this health facility will be in accordance with the data on the plan for drug needs collected by the health ministry. Still, to date, data coordination between health facilities and ministries is not accurate,” said Satibi.
He said that Indonesia’s average drug availability in East Java is quite high, 22.5 months. These results indicate the level of drug availability exceeds the standard, namely 12-18 months. He also stated the high number of drug availability periods is a build-up of supplies in pharmaceutical installation warehouses. If an area is undergoing build-up, other areas that undergo an empty stock or insufficient will continuously hinder pharmaceutical services at the health clinics (puskesmas). “Patients who do not receive the drug will degrade the level of public trust in the health clinics (puskesmas) and lose the opportunity for the health clinics to get profit. While for the patients, it will impact the risk of being unable to recover and will degrade the patient’s quality of life,” he said.
According to him, several factors that influence drug availability in health facilities consist of doctors, patients, and pharmaceutical workers. In the JKN era, doctors as prescribers in their service practices are expected to implement and comply with treatment guidelines and formularies and generic prescribing of e-catalog drugs.
On the other hand, in terms of pharmaceutical workers, especially pharmacists, induce direct and responsible pharmaceutical services to patients and guarantee the availability of quality, efficacious and safe drugs so that they can maintain rational drug use and patient safety. However, currently, there is still a low presence of a pharmacist in health facilities (puskesmas). He mentioned that 17.5 percent of health clinics (puskesmas) in Indonesia have pharmacists, and around 32.2 percent of puskesmas do not even have pharmaceutical workers. Lack of competent pharmaceutical workers as drug managers has restrained jurisdiction for drug management. “Only in the task of formulating and handing drugs to patients and not being able to manage drugs after the implementation of JKN independently,” he said.
Author: Gusti Grehenson
Photo: Vino
Translator: Natasa A