Hukum Ekonomi di Farmasi (Economy Law in Pharmacy)

Well, even though some of the title are in Indonesian, but the post i want to write now will be english.

I surfed around the internet and stumbled upon jay pee's blog, and read this post : http://www.jimplagakis.com/?p=4552. Well Shortage of drug supplies because the profit from selling it is low (or even minus in some cases) has been common there. Can you believe up till 180 drugs are now rare? and these drugs are those older, lifesaving drugs.

Maybe non-health practitioners will start shouting about "where is the heart of those Health care provider/Practitioner" and especially directing there anger to those pharmaceutical Industry who seems to don't care about people lives. But we fa must face it, now the health care world (and also the world itself) is having a dilemma, and that is Money vs Care.

As someone who will be an Apotechary in a few months(if opik pass the exam), opik have looked into the profession. Isn't opening and running a pharmacy a business and also a care provider. But what matters the most? is it those metrics that show your lead time, inventory control, pricing, profit, effectivity, etc, or the care trhat you provide, the feeling you get whe you can solve a patient problem, the relief you get when someone ill gets healed?

It's frustating, more and more now, the pharmacy, whether it's industry, hospital, or in the pahrmacy are becoming "business only". Those vital drugs and service that shuldv'e been provided vanish. Rather, now we have 15 time limit (look at Kimia farma), discounts for pharmacy wrongness and many more.

But don't get us wrong, we need to do this toi survive, otherwise, we'll be Axed from the job, our place will go bankrupt, and the other consequences. So how do we compromise things?

Well, here are some example cases :

1. There was atime in the pharmacy that a patient wanted to buy one kind of the "Obat keras" group,Loperamide" which shouldn't be sold, and the pharmacist there know's she can't sell this, because the patient really doesn't need it yet. The problem is the profit, and a hardheaded patient. So the pharmacist suggests the patient to use Attapulgite and pectin instead (Which is a "obat bebas" can be sold freely witout a Rx), and counsel about the risk regarding loperamide. So she still gets some profit, and th patient have a better drug for his condition.


2. This is when i was in a pharmacy some time ago. As I watched, many Rx that contain patent or brand names was immediately switched to the generic (the cheapest drug, the form that has the INN name, not brand name). Then opik asked about why not give the patient to choose between the patent, brand and generic ones first, because giving a generic immediately will only gain very small profits and giving them the brand ones immediately are rather unethical. Well, we have to respect their choice don't we? This was done, and the profit became larger.

(in this case, if you don't know, in Indonesia, the generics USUALLY use those bad Ingrediaents (from India and China suppliers) and the Patent and brand name USUALLY uses good Ingredients (from europe and USA suppliers) even though this is not always the case, and the difference between good and bad can be very small, like one containing 20 mg, and the bad one only 19 mg)

3.Increasing Sale is not only the way to increase your profit. How many ofyten we stay the pharmacies get pumped out about increasing sales to increase the profit, until the "near death" state. but they can increase much larger just by asking larger imburstment rates from the insurance company, discussing a better contract with the PBF/distributors and companies at their service, and many more. Just don't focus on one are, widen you view friends!!!

So folks, what we are doing in this healthcare system is also a business, ofcourse we care about you, but you also must think about the costs and energy to provide that care. We're just human, we earn profits too, but we also wnat to do it in a good way. Newver ewver think something should be free because there will always be someone or some people paying for those free things.

That's all