The Role of the Pharmacist in Clinical Settings (11): the Additional Fee for Collaboration Enhancement for Outpatient Chemotherapy

At present, chemotherapy for cancer is mainly administered on an outpatient basis, and prescriptions for some oral anticancer drugs and drugs to manage side effects are regularly filled at dispensing pharmacies. Therefore, collaboration between medical institutions and dispensing pharmacies is becoming ever more important. We have now started calculating the costs of the additional fee for collaboration enhancement that was newly established in the April 2020 revision of medical fees. As a tool for sharing information with dispensing pharmacies, we use regimen collaboration sheets and tracing reports. In the year since medical fees were revised, we have calculated a total of 666 additional fees for collaboration enhancement, and we have received 225 tracing reports from dispensing pharmacies. The challenge for the future will be to further increase the number of calculations and strengthen collaboration by improving information sharing tools.