General News
8 May, 2023
Pharmacies in crisis
New 60-day dispensing rules could spell end of many chemists
A SMALL Northern Beaches pharmacist believes he will have to cut opening hours to save money and remain viable following the Albanese government’s move to allow prescriptions to be dispensed over 60 days instead of the current 30 days.
Marlin Coast pharmacist Phil Anderson is warning the community of the catastrophic impact of the proposal by the Federal Government to be announced in the 2023/24 budget. Currently, pharmacies across Australia can only dispense 30 days’ worth of medication at a time.
The change to 60-day dispense was set to begin on July 1 but has now been postponed, with a first set of changes to kick in by September 1.
Mr Anderson, the owner of Marlin Coast Amcal Pharmacy with 25 years of experience, said this move would create massive shortages and threaten the pharmacy industry.
“We need to cut costs, that might mean changing our opening hours. We’ve been open every day except for Christmas for 12 hours a day since I’ve run the business,” he said.
“We’ll be looking to see whether we can afford to be open that long and we’ll be looking at our services and see what remains viable for us to keep on doing because this is a gigantic cut to our revenue.
“From a patient standpoint, we’re concerned about medication supply. We’ve got 400 molecules that we can’t get a hold of at the moment, with another 75 on the critical list.
“These supply issues have been going on for months and sometimes even years, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting any better.”
Mr Anderson said the 60-day dispensing period would force many pharmacies to close or cut costs directly impacting patients.
“I might have enough supply for the first dispensing, but on the second dispensing, because of the enormous changes in the way we do business, I might not have that second supply,” he said.
“The problem is that if all 5500 pharmacies across Australia dispensed twice what they’d normally give out, it could cause a supply chain breakdown.”
Pharmacy Guild of Australia president Trent Twomey, of Cairns, said shortages would be the main problem since Australia manufactured very few medications and imported about 95 per cent of products.
“There are 472 drugs that are unavailable in Australia, we don’t have enough medicine to give everyone one box, and the government wants us to start giving people two boxes,” he said.
“So which patients do they want us to give two to, and which patients do they want us to give none to?
“If you want to redesign the system, you don’t do it in a budget release without talking to the sector on how it’s actually going to work.”
Katter’s Australian Party leader Bob Katter supported the guild and said other small pharmacists had raised concerns about corporate players “out-purchasing” small family businesses.
“I’ve been informed by your family-run pharmacists that when the medication shortage will be in full effect, they won’t have the power to source and order stocks to match the larger corporate chemists,” he said.
