In 2018 the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee publish advice (which is their job) that the number of repeats on prescriptions and the number of days supply should be increased on selected drugs for selected patients. The aim is to reduce administrative overheads where appropriate and to increase convenience of access for those who have trouble getting to a pharmacy.
The target for this measure is people with well managed chronic conditions (often for life) who needlessly pay dispensing fees and have to attend the pharmacy for no good reason. If your doctor is prepared to give you a script for six months supply why do you have to pay six dispensing fees and attend the pharmacy six times to get it?
Well the Pharmacy Guild is sure this is a bad idea.
The community pharmacy lobby has warned that doubling prescription lengths and boosting the amount of medicine available in each script will disrupt supply and may present a risk to patients.
This is coming from the lobby group that says preventing competition between pharmacists is good for you.
So patients needs to pay more to the pharmaceutical industry because the industry cannot fix its supply line problems and because their members would be too stupid to restrict supply in cases of shortage.
I would like to know what risk there is to patients from having 60 day supply in their hot little hand that they don’t have from having 30. Surely it is the responsibility of all the professionals involved to take precautions regarding the medication for those not able to manage it themselves and this ought not impact the majority who can be relied on to take their drugs correctly.
But if you are looking at your dispensing fees taking a big hit any old reason will do if you are as powerful as the Guild.
