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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Primary Health Care Organisations - What's in it for Pharmacy?

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Neil Johnston articles by this author...

Neil Johnston is a pharmacist who trained as a management consultant. He was the first consultant to service the pharmacy profession and commenced practice as a full time consultant in 1972, specialising in community pharmacy management, pharmacy systems, preventive medicine and the marketing of professional services. He has owned, or part-owned a total of six pharmacies during his career, and for a decade spent time both as a clinical pharmacist and Chief Pharmacist in the public hospital system. He has been editor of i2P since 2000.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) recently criticised the Pharmacy Guild of Australia (PGA) for not being open in their negotiations involving the Fifth community Pharmacy Agreement, after it discovered that professional service funding was being “skewed”.
As a result the PSA entered into direct discussions with government to claw back some of the funding the PGA was directing towards eRx systems in the guise that this was a professional service (but was really all about gaining ongoing revenue for the PGA executive).
The PSA was able to alter the balance towards true professional service activities and in so doing, showed an initiative that indicated that it would be involved in the leadership of the pharmacy profession.
After all, it does represent all pharmacists.

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Yesterday, the Federal Government announced the establishment of a national network of Primary Health Care Organisations (PHCO’s) that will be designed to support GP’s, pharmacists and other health care organisations to deliver primary health care and enable patients to more easily access health services.
They are to be initially built on the framework of the existing Divisions of General Practice.

PHCO’s will work with local hospital networks to assist in patient transition out of hospital and better facilitate allied health care for patients with chronic conditions.
They will work to reduce those patients who may be missing out in areas of primary care.

Quick off the mark, the PGA “spin machine” came out with a statement in support, quickly associating their eRx system with this activity, which conveniently overlooks the fact that GP’s already have an alternative in the Medisecure system with a significant point of difference – no conflict of interest.

The eRx system has the PGA as a major shareholder while the Medisecure system has the RACGP as a sponsor – not a shareholder.

Many PGA members feel uneasy about the eRx relationship and maybe they will eventually be motivated do something about it.
The PGA also pointed out the opportunities to have pharmacist representatives on the various boards and that will be vital if pharmacy is to have a true voice.

This may also prove to be a difficult proposition, because existing Divisions of General Practice have been “prickly” in their past associations with pharmacists who may have been involved with the HMR process or National Prescribing Service initiatives.
Often divisions were given carriage of grants supporting pharmacist activity which ended up in other areas.

The point is that the old division culture may be imported into the new organisation – an immediate stumbling block.
AMA president Dr Andrew Pesce has already come out with the concept that these organisations will need to be closely monitored and involve GP leadership if they are to provide desired outcomes.

The Australian Practice Nurses Association welcomed the decision and is keen to identify “gaps” in service provision.

The PSA has yet to make a statement on this issue, but one might suspect that they were very involved with this decision by government in recent times.

This is an area where true pharmacist professional services can be developed and launched, and politically, the PSA will need to have ascendancy within this type of organisation (compared to the PGA) and hold out any “static” that the PGA might use to compete with.

If things move along successfully the first PHCO’s will appear in mid-2011 and funding will appear in the upcoming May budget. However it appears that the PHCO’s budget will be identical to that of the old Division of General Practice budget (around $300 million p.a.). This will be the first test for the new organisation – that of determining how the funding pie breaks up.
GP’s will fight to the death to ensure more than their fair share of the spoils, so who in pharmacy will take them on?

However, the implications here for clinical pharmacists long-term are excellent.

At last there will be a stable and properly funded infrastructure for pharmacists to work out of, which is fully integrated with other health professionals.

As an environment, this will offer more attraction for those pharmacists wishing to build their skills, to eventually create their own independent practice.

Because the PGA has tied all professional service initiatives to a community pharmacy in the past, they have missed the boat in terms of building independent revenue streams not connected to the PBS.

To get back into the action, community pharmacies will have to build suitable practice environments and negotiate with pharmacist practice companies to build a professional service stream for their particular pharmacy.

They will also have to get used to respecting clinical pharmacists as colleagues rather than as employees.

There is hope in the pipeline at last!

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