Pharmacy set for taxi-style deregulation?

STEVE Flavel (pictured), Founder and Team Leader of the Independent Pharmacies of Australia, has contributed this opinion piece which Pharmacy Daily has reproduced in full.

Flavel is the owner of Woody Point Pharmacy in Qld.

We welcome your contributions - to submit them for consideration email to info@pharmacydaily.com.au.

WE’VE all heard the coined term ‘corporate greed’. Unfortunately, nothing could be more evident than in the world of Community Pharmacy.

The Queensland Parliamentary Inquiry into Community Pharmacy ownership has found several “grey areas” where it is clear that many pharmacy owners are exploiting the system, having pecuniary interests in more than the legally permitted number of pharmacies in each state, hidden carefully by complex corporate structures and trusts.

I’m not just talking large corporate pharmacies, but also every pharmacy owner who is deliberately blurring the lines of their pharmacy ownership with corporate/trust structures that they are invested in, which appears most commonly in the realm of marketing groups.

Could it be that the very marketing groups that we thought would save us and allow us to compete with the other marketing groups down the road are at the very heart of what is killing this industry?

Personally, the answer I have come to believe each time I see the catalogues, the discount signs and the claims of 50%, 60% off, who in their right mind could think anything but a resounding “of course it bloody well is”.

Each and every one of these marketing groups is directly profiting from the marketing, the sales, the bulk buys and the ‘clipping of the ticket’ for each deal they have negotiated for their members yet pass through their pockets on the way.

If that’s not the case, why then are these groups posting record increases in revenue each year?

Community pharmacy in Australia has reached a point of crossroads as to our future.

Either we as pharmacy owners support the initiative of the Parliamentary Inquiry and accept our responsibilities of pharmacy ownership ensuring we have no more pharmacies than what can allow us to be present with our finger on the pulse of each pharmacy we have an interest in, or we face the very real risk of watering down the very rules we have been striving so hard to protect for so many years.

With greedy pharmacy owners hiding behind corporate trusts especially those aided by certain marketing groups none of us can be surprised to find our pharmacy industry going down the same path as what has happened to the taxi industry.

It’s time to take a hard look at ourselves and what we want pharmacy as a future to be in this country.

To save their own industry, some pharmacy owners might just have to toe the line and trim their illegal interests in their excessive number of pharmacies.

Is that not a small price to pay for genuine integrity in this industry? Do we want pharmacist only ownership or not? Do we want our future to be in our hands or in corporate hands? Do we want to answer to a board of directors or do we want to answer to ourselves as professional pharmacy owners working in our own community pharmacies as we should be?

The choice is ours to make today. At this crossroads of pharmacy ownership future, now is the time to support the initiative of the Parliamentary Inquiry and actually enforce the rules we have fought so many years to have in effect.

YOUR thoughts?

Let us know by emailing the Pharmacy Daily team on info@pharmacydaily.com.au.