Universal medical coverage (CMU), a social policy par excellence desired and initiated by King Mohammed VI, will be acquired for all Moroccan citizens by December 31, 2022. For Dr. Hamza Guedira, President of the National Council of the Order of Pharmacists ( CNOM), the contribution of pharmacists is essential for the success of this project.
While recalling that since January 1, 2022, the date of the launch of the project, several categories of professionals, including community pharmacists, have switched to the CMU regime, the president of the CNOM assured that the objective is to insure some 11 million ramedists by July 2022, who will have the freedom to choose whether to be treated by the public or private sector.
Dr Guedira did not fail to underline this position during the 19th edition of the Officine Expo, which recently brought together a host of pharmaceutical professionals, who came, in addition to Morocco, from Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal or even of Tunisia, around the Universal medical coverage and community pharmacist“.
This great mass of medicine brought together the various stakeholders in this project that is the CMU, namely, “the funds which must ensure the financial balance of the system, the health professionals who must be able to live with dignity from their profession and finally the regulator ANAM (National Health Insurance Agency)”.
In his speech, the boss of the CNOM thus noted that until now, “the financial balance of the AMO has been preserved by continuous reductions in the price of the drug without compensation for the participants in the pharmaceutical sector. This, he underlined, has generated penalizing economic consequences for these professionals whose income is indexed solely on the margin of the drug”.
In this sense, he pointed out that all the professionals now want a revision of the decree for fixing the price of medicines so that it concerns only reimbursed products and thus allow self-regulation of the market with the rest of the medicines (not reimbursed).
CMU: The contribution of pharmacists necessary
In view of the constraints related to the health economy, the question that comes up repeatedly is what type of medicine are professionals able to provide to Moroccan citizens?
In response to this question, Dr. Guedira estimated at the microphone of MoroccoLatestNews UK, that family medicine remains the basis with a first visit to a general practitioner and then a specialist if necessary. A filter which can also concern the community pharmacist, he specified, ” to treat certain pathologies strictly framed by therapeutic protocols established by the councils of the order (doctors and pharmacists) without encroaching on the prerogatives of each profession. This brings us to the pharmacist’s contribution to the success of CMU“.
Thus, the president of the CNOM affirmed that the pharmacist can contribute enormously to the success of the CMU through several actions and by multiplying the intervention of the dispensing pharmacist in particular via the course of the patient, to push the penetration of generics (currently 39%), strengthen prevention, the pharmaceutical file, the renewal of certain chronic treatments, patient monitoring (therapeutic adherence), orientation tests (COVID-19), vaccination and other actions.
Remuneration for these services will therefore contribute to savings for the reimbursement funds and will be in the form of fees which will allow pharmacists to vary their sources of income, explained Dr. Guedira.
” Of course, the success of this process depends on the good governance of the management system and relies on its complete digitization. This will have the effect, among other things, of better inter-professional communication as well as fluidity of reimbursements. We could even imagine a connected space dedicated to cash registers in pharmacies to bring policyholders closer to them and thus save on branches with a storefront.“, he argued during the Officine Expo 2022.
For the success of this medical coverage project, Dr. Guedira recommended the revision of the texts of law 17-04 (on the drug and pharmacy code) and the dahir 1922 on the regulation on the import, trade, possession and the use of poisonous substances which, according to the National Council of the Order of Pharmacists, ” is very outdated compared to the current exercise of the profession“, before concluding that the” success of the CMU can be duplicated with our African colleagues in order to strengthen South-South cooperation ».
It should be noted that since 2004, Officine Expo has been the benchmark exhibition for South Mediterranean and African pharmacy. It has always been the unmissable event for training, information and innovation in terms of products and services, allowing partners to be closer to the pharmacist thanks to a rich and forward-looking scientific program with a focus on the Evolution of Pharmacy in Morocco and in the World.
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