Survey of community and hospital pharmacist involvement in outpatient chemotherapy using Japanese health information data

Abstract

In this study, information on injectable anticancer drug use and additional fee for enhanced collaboration (AEC) and additional fee for specific drug management guidance 2 (ASD2) claims from the NDB Open Data Japan (NODJ) dataset and the number of patients with cancer according to sex and age from the National Cancer Registry (NCR) dataset were integrated and evaluated to determine the current status and challenges in pharmacist interventions for patients receiving cancer treatment. The NODJ data, including receipt data billed from 2020 to 2021, were obtained from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare website. The use of injectable anticancer drugs decreased relative to the number of cancer patients aged ≥ 75 years compared to those aged < 75 years. Regarding injectable anticancer drug use, the number of AEC claims was similar between men and women, but the number of ASD2 claims was lower in men than in women. The number of times community pharmacists claimed their ASD2 was approximately 5% of the number of times hospital pharmacists claimed their AEC. This study revealed that several patients did not receive sufficient guidance from community pharmacists compared to hospital pharmacists, suggesting a potential insufficiency in the collaboration between the two groups.

Keywords: NDB Open Data Japan; Outpatient chemotherapy; additional fee for enhanced collaboration; additional fee for specific drug management guidance 2; community pharmacist; hospital pharmacist.