Dr. Moza Al Hail, Executive Director of Pharmacy Department at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has confirmed that the drug delivery service launched by the HMC, mid-April for all patients in cooperation with Qatar Post had achieved great success and enabled the beneficiaries to obtain their medicines in a timely manner without the need to go to healthcare facilities as part of efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19).

Dr. Moza Al-Hail told Qatar News Agency (QNA) that HMC's Pharmacy Administration succeeded in the first ten days of launching the service to deliver medicines to homes for more than 20000 patients, while the service during the first week of its launch received more than 30000 calls from patients. She said that the continuous service with all success includes patients who have a re-exchange of previous prescriptions as well as patients who got new medical prescription , as one of the most important features of this service is that it enables the patient to get all his or her medications from one source while he or she was previously required to go to a number of pharmacies to get it.

Dr. Moza Al-Hail stressed that although the service is launched for the first time in cooperation with Qatar Post, but all difficulties were overcome with competent manner, as the service was a great success and won the approval of the beneficiaries from them and enabled them to obtain their medications without the need to attend pharmacies at the Hamad Medical Corporation HMC. She also noted that out of keenness to cover all patients' needs of medicines, other windows were designated to obtain the medicines for emergency cases. She added that the drug delivery service comes as a continuation of the efforts made by the Ministry of Public Health to face the coronavirus and curb its spread, as it was launched in coordination with the Ministry of Health, as part of the precautionary measures undertaken by the Pharmacy Administration to prevent the virus, which includes the absence of patients from the HMC pharmacies and, by allocating a number for direct communication to get medicines according to the treatment plan for each patient.

She talked about the mechanism of service work, where Dr. Moza pointed to the opening of a center at Hamad General Hospital, which is dedicated to receiving calls and providing service to citizens and a second center at Hamad Medical City to receive calls and provide service to residents along with other centers in specialized hospitals such as the presence of a center at the heart hospital and a center at the National Center for Cancer Treatment and Research, along with centers at Al-Khor Hospital and Al-Wakra Hospital. She said that the service would continuously witness an evaluation process with the aim of developing it in the future and benefiting from the experience in delivering repacking drugs to patients at their homes, which saves them the trouble of coming to hospitals to get them, which contributes to the high percentage of patients who are committed to taking their medications in a timely manner, thus healing the patients and improving the general health for them.

Dr. Moza Al-Hail noted that the most important positive aspects of home delivery services lie in reducing the presence of patients in pharmacies and thus reducing crowding and activating the procedures for distancing between individuals, which in turn limits the spread of transitional diseases in general and coronavirus in particular.

On the other hand , she said that the challenges surrounding the experience are obtaining accurate data and information required from patients such as the mobile phone number and the correct housing address as providing inaccurate addresses may delay the delivery of the drug to the patient besides that the service sometimes receives a large number of unnecessary calls that it has nothing to do with ordering and delivering the medicine to homes which wastes time and wastes other patients' opportunities to contact service centers. She added that benefiting from the drug delivery service begins through contacting those who wish to obtain the drug on the number 16000 and choosing Hamad Medical Corporation from the list of options and following the instructions where after receiving the request the patient's data is collected and the drugs are prepared depending on the medical prescription found in patient's electronic file , then another pharmacist reviews the prescription again and collects the medicine in one envelope before handing it over to the postal officer who then delivers the medicine to the patient. She stressed the necessity for the patient to order medicines ten days before the end of the amount of the medicine he or she has, noting that the Qatar Post drivers who deliver the medicines enjoy the highest standards of hygiene, as they were specially trained to deal with drugs, including those that need to cool.

Dr. Moza Al-Hail stressed that HMC's Department of Medical Supply is making exceptional efforts on an ongoing basis, which enabled the provision of all required medicines and pharmaceutical preparations in normal cases, as well as all types of drugs used in the treatment of people infected with the coronavirus (Covid- 19).

Source: QNA

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