AIIMS pharmacy to give 56% discount, install complaint box

New Delhi: In a move to check any discrepancy in medicine distribution, All India Institute of Medical Sciences will introduce a complaint and suggestion box at its first ever pharmacy shop on the hospital campus.AIIMS is the first government hospital to start a 24x7 pharmacy shop inside its premises that provides all medicines and surgical consumables prescribed by its doctors to the OPD patient at a 56 percent discount on MRP across the board.[caption id="attachment_186773" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="Caring 10,000 people a day. Reuters"][/caption]"The pharmacist has been instructed to provide medicines only against AIIMS prescriptions and at 56 per cent discount. The complaint and suggestion box is being introduced to check for any complaints from patients that the shopkeeper is not providing the medicine and diverting them elsewhere," YK Gupta, head of the Department of Pharmacology said."All medicines must be in place and made available by the shopkeeper. There should be no compromise on medicine quality and no patient can be turned away from the pharmacy," he said.Keeping in mind patient welfare, the pharmacist has been instructed to boldly advertise that all drugs including those needed for chemotherapy are 56 percent lesser than MRP.AIIMS has the highest number of footfall (10,000) on daily basis. Of them nearly 8,000 are the patient themselves who report to the OPD. Majority come from the lower income strata of the society who cannot afford treatment elsewhere.Shakti Gupta, head of the department of hospital administration who headed this committee said, "We have taken a Rs 50-lakh performance guarantee from the pharmacist so that if any loophole is found on their part in providing the medicines they will be considered defaulters and lose the money."PTI