Editorial

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Welcome to the May 2012 homepage edition of i2P-Information to Pharmacists. Rollo Manning has been having some time out having staples removed from the site of his open heart surgery.He is now at home recuperating in Darwin, having arrived home last Friday, beating a cold and hasty retreat from Canberra.We all wish him a speedy recovery and hopefully, he will be fit enough to contribute by next month.
This month, Pharmedia discusses the toll that is taken when someone complains about you to an authority without good cause. Well, the good news is that you can now take action to protect yourself if such a complaint is made, and that may even include action for defamation. Read about a recent case involving two doctors, with Mark Coleman drawing on personal experience to illustrate.

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Doctor Shortages – Will a Minor Ailment Strategy Work?

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Editing and Researching news and stories about global and local Pharmacy Issues

Pharmacists have been treating minor ailments under the guise of “counter prescribing”, and doing it successfully for most of the 20th Century.
In the days when compounding was “king” it was offered as a personal medicine service tailored to an individual.
Health consumers loved it and always referred to a pharmacist as “their pharmacist” .
Even in a pharmacy employing more than one pharmacist, each had their own following that added great value to that pharmacy in terms of goodwill and nett profit.
Since the advent of the PBS and most pharmacies dropping their compounding services, counter prescribing has changed to recommendation of various manufactured products and in the process, differentiation between pharmacy services has reduced to be almost non existent.
Because this service was relatively invisible to both government and doctors its demise has only been noticed by pharmacists and an older demographic of health consumers.
The lack of visibility has resulted in pharmacy not being noticed in primary health care ranks.

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Recently, the non-prescription medicines industry joined national pharmacy organizations to urge the Federal Government to do more to address GP shortages through a scheme that would see some minor ailments redirected to pharmacists.

The Executive Director of the Australian Self-Medication Industry (ASMI), Juliet Seifert said:

The Government’s announcement of additional GP training places was very welcome, but would not see more doctors actually available for a number of years.

The GP shortage could be addressed in a more timely way through a program that encourages patients with minor ailments to visit their pharmacist as a first port of call.”

Both the PSA and the PGA supported ASMI’s position.

Recent work undertaken by ASMI shows that the GP resources devoted to coughs, colds and other minor ailments could free-up the equivalent of 1,000 full time GPs to treat more serious health problems

“A program of self care in pharmacies could make serious inroads into the current shortage of GPs across the country and could produce results in a relatively short period of time,” Ms Seifert said.

“There is also some $260 million in ‘waste and resource misallocation’ as a result of Medicare benefits associated with GP treatment of minor ailments,” she said.

The study was based on only the ten most frequently treated minor ailments which account for 58% of all GP attendances attracting Medicare benefit for minor ailments, and which represented some 15 million GP consultations.

“In the face of a severe national shortage of GPs, it makes sense to look at what people can do to take greater personal responsibility for their health through improved diet, exercise and self care of minor ailments.

“By moving some of the most common minor ailments away from overstretched GPs and into pharmacies, we would enable GPs to concentrate on more urgent primary care needs”.

The most common minor ailments identified in the study were acute upper respiratory tract infection, back pain, diarrohea and gastroenteritis, joint pain, coughs, viral infection, malaise and fatigue, headache and constipation. Approximately half of all patients presenting at a GP for the 10 most frequently treated minor ailments were also treated with a prescription.

“Additional GP places are much-needed but we also need to look at how we can address the unsustainable demand for health services that threatens to outstrip future GP capacity, and overrun health budgets,” Ms Seifert said.

Pharmacists already know that a self care system will work, but they also know that the profit margins of yesteryear were always sufficient to develop new service and the promotion level required.
The reintroduction of this type of service would be seen as restoring a natural balance.

Assistance and cooperation from all levels of industry and government would see a resurrection of this valuable health consumer service.

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