Fourth Community Pharmacy Agreement Must Be Closely Monitored For Public Benefit
AMA President, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, said today that the AMA acknowledges the emergence of the Fourth Community Pharmacy Agreement after a difficult gestation and looks forward to monitoring its development over the next five years in regard to how it delivers significant public benefits.
Dr Haikerwal said that if the Agreement fails the public benefit test, it should be the last of its kind.
"The true test of whether the Agreement is in the public interest is whether distribution costs as a proportion of total pharmaceutical costs fall as they should, given the huge growth in Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) costs," Dr Haikerwal said.
"A dollar spent unnecessarily on distribution is a dollar not spent on pharmaceuticals for Australians.
"The AMA will be closely monitoring the progress of the Agreement to see if the Government's targets are met and whether distribution costs do actually fall.
"The second test is whether access to a pharmacy is improved for all Australians, which means having more pharmacies in convenient locations in all communities.
"But it is unclear how the relaxation of the location rules will improve access, and we ask the Government and the Pharmacy Guild to make public their expectations of how the relaxed rules will increase the number of pharmacies.
"Our advice to the Government was not to define large medical practices by the number of doctors practising in them, as this is a nebulous concept far removed from reality.
"For instance, how many eight-doctor practices are there in Australia, and how many do not have an existing co-located pharmacy? The answers to these questions should have been in the public domain before the Agreement was signed.
"Again, the AMA will follow the new pharmacy location rules closely.
"In our view the Fourth Community Pharmacy Agreement should be the last Agreement unless it can be shown to clearly provide a strong public benefit - not just a benefit to pharmacists and the Pharmacy Guild," Dr Haikerwal said.
The AMA will examine the details of the Agreement - and look out for reported proposals backed by the Treasurer to cut the price of generic drugs on the PBS - and make further informed comment as necessary.