Ana Advinha and Sofia Martins in an interview with News Farma about the Index of access to the Hospital Medicine
In an interview with “News Farma”, CHRC researchers, Sofia de Oliveira Martins and Ana Margarida Advinha, spoke about the main conclusions of the National Index of Access to the Hospital Medicines 2023, the barriers that justify the reduction of this Index and how they intend to raise awareness among hospital institutions and political decision-makers to improve access to medicine.
The National Index of Access to Hospital Medicines started in 2018, with the main objective of measuring access to hospital medicines in a real-life context. This initiative aims to study barriers to access to hospital medicine and propose measures to overcome them.
The method used to create this Index involved the construction of a more complex index (6 dimensions) through a panel of experts, from pharmacists, doctors, economists, literally all those who are inserted in the hospital environment, in order to contribute to the calculation end of the index and to identify the main barriers to access to hospital medicine. The idea is to replicate this index every two years to check if there have been improvements and to overcome some identified barriers, as indicated by Sofia Oliveira in the interview.
Ana Margarida Advinha essentially refers three aspects where the greatest difficulties are encountered: a strong impact of medication stock rupture, which occur on a daily to weekly basis; too much administrative burden, which translates into lengthy bureaucratic processes; and the need to collect effectiveness and safety data in a real-life context.
What is proposed to improve the Hospital Medicine Access Index? It’s important to ensure a public presentation of the Index, inviting all political players and from there raising awareness among hospital institutions and political decision-makers regarding the points where intervention is necessary.
This official presentation of the 2023 Index of the Access to the Hospital Medicines was carried out on November 17th of the same year, by researchers Sofia de Oliveira Martins and Ana Margarida Advinha, at the 15th Medicines Forum, at Fundação Oriente, with the analysis made by a panel of experts constituted by Hélder Mota-Filipe, Carlos Lima Alves, Rosário Trindade and Luís Miguel Gouveia.
Read the full interview on https://drive.google.com/file/d/12GlG6lw2kARrcdvd6Zux4NiCXUytcCEC/view?usp=drive_link
Video of the interview: https://youtu.be/U_Ve-k1v3A8
Image credits: News Farma