"Finding Prescriptions from Telemedicine Made Easier"...Pharmacy Dispensing Information to Be Opened

Ministry of Health and Welfare to End 'Pharmacy Hopping' from May 6
Location-Based Service to Guide Patients to Pharmacies Able to Fill Prescriptions

The inconvenience faced by patients who received telemedicine consultations—having to call multiple pharmacies or physically visit them to have their prescriptions filled—will be significantly reduced.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service announced on May 5 that, starting from May 6, information on the availability and dispensing status of telemedicine-prescribed medicines at each pharmacy will be provided to telemedicine intermediaries (platforms) to enhance user convenience.

Until now, telemedicine users have experienced inconvenience because, even after receiving a prescription, they could not know which nearby pharmacy carried the prescribed medication. This new measure aims to resolve such nationwide inconvenience and to smoothly connect the entire process from consultation to dispensing.

The government has decided to first open, via an Open API (Application Programming Interface), information on the purchase or dispensing status of medicines—for which there has been a telemedicine prescription within the past year—at each pharmacy to private platforms. This measure is based on the idea that pharmacies with a history of purchasing or dispensing a particular medication are more likely to have that medication in stock.

Once the data is released, each telemedicine platform will utilize the provided information to develop and offer user-customized services, such as 'pharmacies where dispensing is possible,' within their respective apps. Through this, patients will be able to immediately identify and visit the pharmacy closest to their location that is most likely to have their prescribed medication in stock, which is expected to significantly mitigate gaps in treatment caused by delays or abandonment of dispensing.

For example, previously, an office worker who received a telemedicine consultation and tried to fill a cold medicine prescription after work would have had to call multiple pharmacies and might not have been able to take the medication until several hours later. In the future, however, such users will be able to quickly locate a pharmacy where dispensing is possible through an app and promptly receive their medication.

Kwak Soonheon, Director of Health and Medical Policy at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, said, "This data release will substantially reduce the inconvenience experienced by the public during the use of telemedicine. We will continue to provide policy support to further establish telemedicine and enhance patients' access to healthcare."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.