Hospital mulls expanding TCM home delivery

A local hospital is considering expanding its free Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) delivery service to more of Shanghai to reduce the amount of time patients spend waiting to receive their prescriptions, local media reported Monday.

Yueyang Hospital, which has a well-regarded TCM department, began earlier this year offering to deliver TCM prescriptions to patients' homes in the city, with the exception of Chongming Island, Changxing Island and Hengsha Island, according to Jiefang Daily.

"Although the details are still under discussion, we have clearly seen how the new service has brought down the average time patients have had to wait," a press officer surnamed Xu told the Global Times.

Unlike in hospital pharmacies in the West, Chinese patients sometimes have to wait hours for hospital pharmacies to prepare their TCM prescriptions due to their complexity.

"TCM doctors prescribe a unique mix of medicine for each patient, depending on his or her condition. There are approximately 20 to 25 kinds of herbs and other ingredients in each TCM prescription, and all the ingredients are provided in different amounts," Xu said.

Before the hospital started the delivery service, patients had to wait two hours on average to pick up their medicine, Xu said. Now, a patient just needs to fill out an address form and submit a prescription. The medicine usually shows up at his or her home the following day.

The service was also designed to help reduce the mounting number of patients hanging around in the hospital's lobby waiting to pick up their prescriptions.

The hospital sees 6,000 patients each day, about 2,000 of whom are prescribed TCM medicine, Xu said. About one-third of those use the delivery service.

The medicine is supplied by two TCM factories, which help prepare the prescriptions before they are delivered to patients' homes, according to the hospital.

The hospital plans to spend 700,000 yuan ($110,320) each year on the service.

Currently, the hospital has 30 pharmacists devoted to preparing the TCM prescriptions, according to the Jiefang Daily report. They work for 12 hours a day, with only a 10-minute lunch break.