The National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA), Taiwan Dental Association, and Federation of Taiwan Pharmacists Associations have reached a consensus to improve the accessibility of medication. To achieve the goal, a trial run of adding "substitutable" or "non-substitutable" tags for each drug on the prescription is set to start in October 2024. In addition, starting next year, dental clinic prescriptions shall include the drug ingredients to make filling out prescriptions easier for the patients.
The Director General Chung-Liang Shih of the NHIA said that more than 90% of dental visits in Taiwan are made in dental clinics and over 99% of the dental clinic prescriptions are filled out in community pharmacies. Moreover, most of these prescriptions are for rather simple drugs such as first-line antibiotics, antipyretic painkillers, and anti-inflammatory painkillers. In the future, when the prescription is made with ingredient names, dentists can easily prescribe drugs based on their active ingredients and patients will not have to search multiple pharmacies to obtain drugs of a specific brand. Additionally, pharmacists can recommend suitable drugs according to the prescription based on their expertise. The new measure shall be a win-win-win situation for dentists, patients, and pharmacists. However, if a drug on the prescription should not be substituted by other drugs with the same ingredients, the dentist can leave a "non-substitutable" tag on the prescription to safeguard the patients' rights to proper medications.
The NHIA stated that this trial run focuses on dental clinics which prescribe simple, one-time, and short-term medications. Considering that prescriptions of other Western-medicine clinics may involve more complex situations such as patients with chronic illnesses or patients who require long-term medication. Further discussions with various stakeholders and careful consideration and evaluations are required to determine whether to expand this initiative in the future to ensure medication safety and quality for the public.