BEIRUT: Health Minister Wael Abu Faour announced Sunday that he would not back down from calling on Lebanese doctors to adopt a unified prescription form.
“The unified prescription form is an essential demand that won’t be revoked,” the health minister said in a statement released by his news office. “If there was one objective reason [urging me] to go back on my [demand] then I would be willing to reconsider. But there isn’t a single objective reason [to do so].”
Last month, Abu Faour asked Walid Ammar, the director-general of the Health Ministry, to make sure that all physicians adopted a unified prescription form.
Stipulated in a law endorsed by Parliament in 2010, the form aims to better monitor the flow of medication and to serve as a legal document to prove consent between the doctor and the patient when an agreement is made to switch to generic drugs, which are usually cheaper than brand names.
However, The Order of Physicians, which was tasked to print the form, refused to adopt the decision before the National Social Security Fund amends its bylaws, which do not allow pharmacists to sell patients a substitute for the medicine prescribed, preventing patients from switching to generic drugs without a doctor’s consent.
The health minister said that he was “suspicious” of the motives behind rejecting the proposal to adopt a unified prescription form, while stressing that the move would benefit doctors and patients alike.
“Reform will not work against the doctors at all, but instead [it will work] to their benefit,” the health minister concluded.
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