Even though Federal Parliament has risen for the Winter break, our campaign against 60-day dispensing continues to get traction, including this opinion piece by the Guild’s National President Trent Twomey published this month in Sydney’s ‘The Daily Telegraph’. The full piece as published follows.
When something is too good to be true, it usually is.
That's the case with the Federal Government's 60-day medicine dispensing policy, which requires pharmacists to dispense double the quantity of medicine for a patient, starting on September 1.
The headline sounds great but scratch the surface and you find a very different story.
That's because your local community pharmacy picks up the cost of the policy, receiving the same funding from the Government for twice the amount of work.
This may seem small but it fundamentally changes how pharmacies operate.
Community pharmacies, not the big box chains, focus on patients and primarily on dispensing medicine.
We operate in an environment where the Government decides the cost of our products and if that funding gets cut in half to dispense medicine, there aren't many options available. In the case of 6000 community pharmacies, mostly small and family operated pharmacies, a halving of funding will mean job losses, closures and the ending of free patient services.
This month an independent report modelled the impact 60-day dispensing would have on pharmacies. The report was conducted by economist Henry Ergas AO with Tulipwood Advisory and the Relational Insights Data Lab at Griffith University.
It found as many as 20,818 jobs will go, 665 pharmacies will close with a further 900 community pharmacies will be placed under financial stress.
Already pharmacies around the country, especially in rural and regional Australia, have begun announcing the cutting of staff and trading hours since 60-day dispensing was announced.
This isn't an exaggeration. It is the cold reality due to the Government not reinvesting the funding they are cutting, despite public commitments from the Minister for Health.
Tu Anh Vo from Westpoint Centre Pharmacy in Windradyne in Central Western NSW has said: "I have a lot of staff that will go if this goes through. I'll have to cut my trading hours. The cost of services will have to increase. I won't be able to spend time with people and I won't be able to do walk-ins. I'm not even sure I'll be able to do vaccinations." The changes will also mean shorter trading hours and the end of free pharmacy services. Free services such as monitoring of blood pressure, diabetes and asthma, home delivery of medicines and blister packs to aged care residents will need to stop.
Unfortunately, we are having these conversations with our patients now because the Federal Government did not consult with us prior to announcing the policy.
More worryingly, the Department of Health has now confirmed to Senate Estimates they engaged global consultant firm McKinsey to understand the impact of the policy months after it was made public.
And they are rushing to implement it without grasping the true story for patients or pharmacies.
Our ask of the Federal Government is simple please sit down with us, consult and listen to 6000 community pharmacies.
You will get the true picture of your policy, which is not the version told to you by Canberra health bureaucrats.
All pharmacists want cheaper medicine for their patients and that can be achieved without impacting patients, costing jobs and forcing pharmacies to shut.
