You deserve more campaign launches

The AMA this week launched a campaign to fight back against flawed go-it-alone pharmacy prescribing, warning that patients deserved more than a “second-tier system” that risks their health and safety.

AMA President Professor Steve Robson launched the You deserve more campaign outlining the flaws in pharmacy prescribing and presenting solutions such as improving access to general practice and making medicines cheaper that would make a real difference to Australians without jeopardising their health and safety.

He said patients deserve more than trials that threaten their safety, fragment care and undermine Australia’s world-class health system.

Professor Robson said governments should be investing in evidence-based solutions to improve access to general practice and affordability of medicines.

“Patients deserve access to a full range of treatments and holistic doctor-led care rather than being treated as a customer at a counter.

“They deserve the care of someone who has the qualifications to properly diagnose them, who can take time to ensure they get the best health outcomes.”

The AMA campaign was covered by various media including Australian Doctor and the Sydney Morning Herald. 

Professor Robson said allowing pharmacists to autonomously prescribe medicines had the real potential to harm patients and turned on its head time-honoured and tested principle of separating prescribing and dispensing to prevent a conflict of interest.

“The move by the states and territories to allow autonomous pharmacy prescribing sidesteps independent expert advice intended to protect patients, including clinical guidelines,” he said.

“Patients deserve more. We should be looking at what’s effective, including funding to improve access to care after-hours, supporting GPs to deliver care in aged-care facilities and supporting them to spend longer with patients.

“There are also immediate solutions to improve access to and affordability of medicines, including implementing the recommendations of the independent Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee on two-month dispensing and 12-month prescribing and encouraging competition by changing pharmacy ownership and location rules and allowing pharmacies to discount the co-payment by more than $1.”

Professor Robson said on ABC 666 Canberra that state and territory leaders had identified access to GPs as a major problem.

“But rather than try and solve those problems to actually make general practice affordable, they have defaulted to a second-tier system, which is what pharmacy prescribing is,” he said.

“We think this abrogates governments from actually doing what they should do, which is make general practice more affordable.

The Australian newspaper in article, “Chemists’ war with doctors heats up”, quoted AMA Vice President Dr Danielle McMullen saying states and territories were bypassing regulators and “going rogue” allowing non-medical prescribing without medical oversight.

“We’ve looked around the world and there aren’t other examples of this autonomous prescribing,” she said.

“Yes, there are some places around the world where non-medical people do some prescribing, but that is by and large in structures where there is medical oversight, it’s very limited and it’s very structured.”