Drugs to be placed on hospital radar to prevent pilferage

The Ministry for Energy and Health is seeking part-funding from the EU and the private sector to develop a technological solution for the dispensing of medicines in state hospitals to prevent their theft.

The €15 million project – submitted for consideration under the EU Investment Initiative – involves the creation of a new central storage depot for medicines, the implementation of a stock-keeping IT system, the introduction of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags on medicinals to monitor stock movements and introducing automated medicine dispensing cabinets in state hospitals.

The RFID tag will also register the staff member and patient or bed number dispensed to, in order to prevent abuse.

Once funding is secured, the government estimates a timeframe for completion of 24-30 months.

The system is expected to quadruple annual stock turnover and directly deliver medicines from suppliers to end users, where possible. The dispensers will automatically reorder medicines when stocks in the dispensing machine need replenishing.

The project forms part of a wider shake-up of the system of primary medical care in Malta.

Malta’s public healthcare system offers free medicine to all inpatients in state hospitals and old age residential facilities. Free medicines are also made available for all sufferers of chronic medical conditions such as high cholesterol and depression. Low-income persons are entitled to free medicinals for all conditions, after being means-tested.

This large demand is not helped by what has been described by the present administration as “a non-system plagued with lack of controls and regular out-of-stock mishaps” with regard to current medicine procurement and distribution practices”.

This is by no means the first time the government has attempted to curb spiralling health costs.

Last June, the health ministry announced a target of reducing costs of healthcare services for diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol and obesity ailments that could be handled by GPs, by €7 million in 2020.

In October, the government had mooted plans to offer tax rebates to individuals who opted for private medical insurance, however this proposal did not feature in the subsequent budget for 2015. Subsequently, in November the EU Commission had asked the government to “accelerate progress on the planned efforts to improve fiscal sustainability of the healthcare system.”

Costs related to medicines take up a large chunk of the health budget, consuming some 22% of the allocation for healthcare operations. In 2012, the costs of medicinals, related appliances and equipment amounted to €75.32 million. In 2014 expenditure reached €84 million – 1.13% of GDP.

The financial estimates promise that even a 5% increase in efficiency would recover the costs of the project in under four years – a fact that would make the new tech-based system even more appealing to the government as one way of tackling the mushrooming operational cost of the existing system.