Policy satisfaction for separation of dispensing from medical practices in Taiwan: Success of the prescription-release information system

Although the policy of the separation of dispensing from the medical practice (SDMP) has been promoted by the Department of Health (DOH) in Taiwan for many years, it has never been significantly successful. Instead of transferring prescriptions to the insurance-contracted pharmacy (ICP) in the community, most of the patients still fill their prescriptions in the hospital or clinic. This is because the policy lacks the necessary supporting measures and incentives. Therefore, we propose a prescription-release information system (PRIS) that makes the prescription release more convenient under the governmental healthcare policy. This test-run system is integrated into the hospital information system (HIS) of Sinying Hospital, which allows the outpatient to choose a preferable pharmacy and transfer prescriptions there via the virtual private network (VPN) in a self-guided way. We posit that this PRIS is a major factor in the successful promotion of the SDMP policy. Therefore, a research model is built, and the corresponding survey is administered to validate our hypotheses. The results indicate that most of the respondents are satisfied with the PRIS and the SDMP and that the PRIS concretely supports the prevalence of the SDMP policy.