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The system for issuing electronic prescription protocols for expensive medicines for home treatment enables patients to receive their medicines in less than 2 hours, whereas before process computerization, the certification at the regional health insurance offices took several days to several weeks. This is clear from the analysis of the data from the electronic platform for issuance of the "Protocol for prescription of medicines paid by the National Health Insurance Fund / Regional Health Insurance Funds (NHIF / RHIF)". The system was put into operation by Information Services on 1 March 2023 and from the beginning of July 2023 the Regional Health Insurance Funds started to accept only electronic protocols.
"The data show that the whole procedure of processing the electronic protocol "1C", which is the most common in the dispensing of expensive medicines, has been reduced to 85 minutes, which is a huge relief for patients, some of whom are difficult to move, saving them considerable money and time," said Georgi Nedev, Head of Health Insurance Systems at Information Services. According to him, electronic protocols have successfully replaced the paper protocols used until recently to dispense medication for costly home treatment. With their introduction, the obligation for health insured persons to visit the RHIF and submit medical documentation for protocol certification was removed. The obligation for patients to provide paper documents to pharmacies upon receipt of their prescribed medication was also removed. To date, protocols for costly home treatment have been issued to over 231 000 people, who are among the most vulnerable.
Through the system for electronic protocols processing, medicinal products worth more than BGN 1.635 billion were dispensed. On average, medicines worth BGN 90 million are dispensed monthly under the protocols for expensive home treatment. The data show that nearly 720 000 electronic protocols for expensive home treatment have been issued so far. Based on the approved documents, 3.8 million e-prescriptions have been filled in over 3,000 pharmacies across the country. The pharmacy network processes over 6,500 prescriptions per day for medicines dispensed for costly home treatment. A total of more than 3.2 million medicines were dispensed. More than 5 300 medical professionals and 5 600 pharmacists work with the system.
Since 1 September 2024, when the NHIF started sending real-time notification via SMS or Viber to patients using costly home treatment medicines and aids, over 200 000 messages have been sent to date. So far, nearly 90,000 patients have been notified of new protocol registration, approval, cancellation, refusal, expiry of protocol, need for additional documents, etc. This is a major relief for patients, who get to know the status of their protocol in real time.
"The use of electronic protocols also increases many times the control of the NHIF over the spending of funds for expensive home treatment, which leads to more detailed planning, forecasting and resource management," said Georgi Nedev.