Editorial

From the desk of the editor

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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Major Revamp of PBS Needed

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Rollo Manning articles by this author...

Rollo Manning has experienced pharmacy practice from all sectors of the industry – retail, administrative, policy and remote Aboriginal practice. He spent 10 years with Glaxo Australia and was the first Director of Public Relations at the Pharmacy Guild National Secretariat in Canberra. He has also held the position of Pharmacy Policy Officer for Territory Health Services in Darwin. Rollo is currently a Consultant working in his own practice with remote Aboriginal communities, in Northern Australia.

A PharmCare Agency is needed to operate the PBS with the retailing left to specialist operators skilled in that field.
The pharmacy presence in the Australian shopping landscape has to change and diverse itself into a retailing block and a professional service block.
The former will be for those consumers who want cheap places to shop, obtain free medical advice and a product to fix a problem without going to a doctor.
This is an undeniable need.
Pharmacy graduates who enjoy the thrill of the retailing sector – cut price everything and suspect products with refutable claims – will man these outlets and be limited in the claims they can make as a professional outlet.

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The professional block, to be called PharmCare agencies, will be for those who believe in the “clinical” aspect of pharmacy practice and want to spend their days helping primary health care professionals to make people healthier.

In the main centres where pharmacies have operated in a competitive retailing environment it simply has not worked to combine the two functions. People who go to a doctor have the right to obtain their prescription filled at an agency that concentrates on providing supporting advice from a pharmacist and in subsequent treatments have a monitoring role in pharmaceutical care. This will be an obligatory function of the agency as a part of the health system.

The problem has been expecting the best of both worlds – a professional service from a retail shop. It simply has not worked and the sooner the profession as a whole appreciates this the better off it will be.

“There is no point in pointing the finger at the employees union (APESMA), the wages board or the employers union (Guild) when the basic fault lies in the infrastructure around which Pharmaceutical Benefits are supplied to the Australian public.” – i2P March 2011

Ten years ago a review of the structure of the pharmacy retail industry under National Competition Policy determined there was a need to inject more capital into the industry if it was to be a viable force in primary health care. This was rejected by the professional bodies through a draft report that was then shelved, the report rewritten and the status quo remained. That was an opportunity lost.

The first 20 years of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in Australia (1950 – 1970) was a settling in time and one of dramatic change in the way pharmaceuticals were manufactured and marketed to the Australian consumer. The next 40 years (1970-2010) have seen a disastrous change in the way the “community” pharmacy sector has responded to the dual challenge of competing in a retail environment becoming increasingly dominated by the big operators. The “retail” pharmacy has continued to dedicate the majority of floor space to retailing while saying that professional services are its future. What a dichotomy! It just does not make sense to cling to the retail dollar of the front of shop and relegate the future to the rear of the premises and in most cases completely out of sight.

“The sooner the Productivity Commission can get its teeth into the PBS and the value for money it is costing the Australian consumer the sooner there may be alternative models for supplying the PBS to the Australian consumer.” – i2P – March 2011

The next 20 years will hopefully see the establishment of a new model of agencies dedicated to supplying the Australian consumer with a quality pharmaceutical care service with a proven track record of improving health outcomes.

Comments and discussion welcome.

Contact the author Rollo Manning at rollom@iinet.net.au or 0411 049 872

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