French carte Vitale must now be presented at pharmacy to receive certain medicines
Pharmacists should ‘systematically’ ask patients for their health card when dispensing prescriptions
The rule change has come into effect immediately
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Presenting your carte Vitale when collecting most medicines from a pharmacy will soon be mandatory, state insurer Assurance Maladie has announced.
The aim of the measure is to reduce the risk of fraud relating to reimbursements and the misuse of certain drugs, with a particular focus on in-demand and expensive drugs.
The move comes into force immediately.
“In order to promote the proper use of the healthcare system, make the dispensing of sensitive and/or expensive drugs more secure, limit fraud and improve the traceability of the care pathway, it will now be compulsory to present your carte Vitale at the pharmacy in order to receive reimbursement,” said the Caisse national Assurance Maladie (Cnam) in a press release.
The insurer also states that systematically presenting your card will allow all health professionals to more easily track your health through medical records tied to the card – including prescription history.
What do changes mean?
In practice, it means pharmacists will ask you to show your carte Vitale – either the physical or digital version – when receiving any medication from a prescription.
Although the measure is mostly aimed at expensive drugs, those in short-supply, or those subject to stricter regulations, the change is to become ‘systematic’ with pharmacists encouraged to ask for the carte Vitale in relation to all prescriptions.
In many cases, pharmacists already ask patients to present their carte Vitale when collecting a prescription.
Medicines facing higher scrutiny will only be dispensed in ‘exceptional circumstances’ to those without a carte Vitale, for example those under three months old or residents in care homes for the elderly.
Presenting the carte Vitale will be necessary for any third-party (mutuelle) reimbursement for those signed up to the French healthcare system.
Those not in the healthcare system will still be able to collect medicines prescribed to them by a doctor in France.
