Convenience Clinics

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	Staff Writer articles by this author...
Editing and Researching news and stories about global and local Pharmacy Issues

Convenience type clinics as developed in the US have shown remarkable growth in the past five years. Staffed by nurse practitioners, they deal with a range of minor illnesses that, in Australia, have been traditionally treated by pharmacists. Nurse practitioners in Australia are now being given prescribing rights and are set to offer a real challenge to pharmacists through access to subsidised medicines on the PBS and perhaps their consulting fees, subsidised through Medicare.
Obviously, the Australian pharmacy model for delivering primary health care is out of step with the rest of the health professions, and is not a strong enough offering to survive into the future.

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Patients obviously like convenience settings as the following story published in Time illustrates:

Getting Well While You Shop

"If there's one thing most patients lack, it's patience. And who can blame them? When you're burning up with fever or your child has an earache or that sore throat you've been nursing doesn't seem to be going away, the last thing you want to hear is that your doctor's next open appointment is a month from now.

Good thing then that there's a supermarket or pharmacy nearby. Need to buy some shampoo or pick up a few things for dinner? Why not see the doctor — or, more accurately, the nurse practitioner or physician's assistant — while you're at it?

For all the complexities of the U.S. health-care crisis, most Americans experience the problem in a straightforward way: it's just too hard to schedule face time with your family doctor, and it costs too much when you finally get in the door. Of the approximately 1 million physicians working in the U.S., just 30% provide primary care. If you do get an appointment during the week, you'll probably have to take off time from work and carve out at least a few hours to sit in a waiting room. And if you get sick on a weekend, good luck."

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It is not likely that pharmacists will get a "leg up" in developing a more acceptable version of primary health care delivery system.
In fact, any innovations in this area will need to be very economical to patients so that they would be prepared to pay privately.
Once established government may subsidise the offer, but it would have to be differentiated from the nursing offer.
For the moment, nurses are better organised in that they belong to a single body to look after their interests, no matter where they are located (hospital or community service).
Nor will they rely on the sale of products to subsidise their income.
There is a developing argument for pharmacists to split into two camps - the supply pharmacist delivering products at the lowest price, and the practitioner pharmacist dealing with economical clinical services.
For the moment, the clinical pharmacist remains unsupported and if this is allowed to continue, we will see an arid, unrewarding profession evolve, and some would say that time has now arrived.