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Real-Time Monitoring of Electronic Prescriptions to Be Introduced by Bulgaria’s National Health Insurance Fund from April 1, 2025
Starting April 1, 2025, the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) will implement real-time monitoring of the issuance and fulfillment of electronic prescriptions.
This new control system aims to enhance the quality of patient care, particularly for those receiving reimbursed therapy from the NHIF. The updated regulations will allow the Health Fund to exercise preventive oversight, ensuring more efficient public resource allocation.
Outpatient care providers and pharmacies will receive real-time verification of electronic prescriptions. For this preliminary control to assist general practitioners in prescribing medications based on pharmacy stock availability, full software integration with the Specialized Electronic System for Tracking and Analyzing Medicinal Products (SESMP) is required.
The current medication verification process will remain unchanged.
The introduction of real-time monitoring is the result of agreements between the NHIF, the Bulgarian Medical Association, the Bulgarian Pharmaceutical Union, the Ministry of Health, and Information Services AD.
Marketing Authorization Holders for medicinal products are required to submit product code data via SESMP. The system is also updated weekly with medications temporarily banned for export.
This decision is a step forward in streamlining prescription and dispensing processes, said Dimitar Marinov, Chairman of the Bulgarian Pharmaceutical Union, in a statement to BTA. According to him, the new system will prevent invalid prescriptions from reaching pharmacies due to errors such as incorrect protocol numbers or unverified diagnoses, which currently force pharmacies to turn patients away for corrections. From April, with real-time NHIF monitoring, pharmacies will report immediately instead of on a bi-weekly basis.
The Bulgarian Medical Association has reiterated its stance that general practitioners should have real-time access to medication availability in pharmacies./Econ.bg