Guild national president, Kos Sclavos, believes that pharmacy bodies which support the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia’s position on Super Clinics are wide of the mark.
“These pharmacists may think, ‘this is great! I’ll be independent and won’t have to work for a pharmacist’ – that’s not going to happen. My brother is a specialist radiologist he has told me that specialist radiologists, when their contracts are up with the corporates, they resign in droves. Because they don’t like the process, they lose their professional independence.”
Mr Sclavos told Pharmacy News that the experience of nurses in medical centres was illustrative of what could happen to pharmacists in a similar position.
Some pharmacists may think that the MBS [payment] will go to the consultant pharmacist - that’s not going to happen, it doesn’t happen now. The nurses lobbied for it but guess who gets the payment now for practice nurses in the medical centre? The corporate owners.”
The PSA submitted a position paper to government which backed MBS remuneration for some pharmacists in GP Super Clinics.
In a letter responding to the Guild’s call for the PSA to withdraw its submission, PSA national president Brian Grogan said,
“If a local community pharmacy or pharmacies can not be represented in a GP Super Clinic, [the] PSA believes there is the potential for an individual pharmacist not allied to a community pharmacy to be engaged. Such a pharmacist’s role would be to ensure quality use of medicines, It would not be a dispensing role.”
The Pharmacists’ Division of APESMA (PDA) has also dismissed the Guild’s statement that the PSA’s position on Super Clinics would be “potentially devastating for community pharmacy”, as “alarmist nonsense.”
In a statement, Geoff March, President of the PDA, said,
“There is not a skerrick of evidence that pharmacists working in such positions in the UK have ‘devastated’ community pharmacy. In fact clinic pharmacists and community pharmacists work collaboratively and effectively.”
Mr Sclavos acknowledged that the debate within the profession was useful but warned the government could use the PSA’s position as a bargaining tool.
Do we want to have pharmacist vs pharmacist? Do we want payments outside of the Agreement? [Fourth Community Pharmacy Agreement] The Government has rejected the PSA proposal but all we are saying is that we want that proposal withdrawn because they [government] may hold that against us on some future budget night.
“They may say, ‘We have a letter from the PSA saying they support this model through the MBS and now HMRs are 30 dollars and they’re open to medical corporates’. The Guild has been working hard to get the fee increased for HMRs – through MBS the government could gazump us.”
Mr Scalvos said that under current location rules all of the proposed 31 Super Clinics could have a community pharmacy located within it.
“We’ve done that analysis,” he said.