COVID crisis shows value of pharmacy

EMERGENCY dispensing measures introduced during Victoria’s bushfire and COVID-19 crises, should be made permanent, a State MP believes.

Addressing a sitting of the State Parliament last week, Liberal Democrat MP, Tim Quilty, urged the Government to cull red-tape around continued dispensing saying the COVID experience had shown “a great deal of regulations are unnecessary or even harmful”.

“If these regulations were never re-implemented, we could save more lives, not just in response to COVID-19 but in response to the hundreds of other illnesses that take lives every day,” he said.

“With the reduced regulations, pharmacists would have greater power to issue routine scripts without the need for patients to visit a doctor, nurses would be able to care for more patients and vaccines would be easier to provide.

“These changes have been made to save lives and reduce the burden on the healthcare system.

“Removing these regulations has undoubtedly saved lives, so the real question is: why did we ever implement them to begin with?

“I call on the minister to refer each of these relaxed regulations to the red tape commissioner... to investigate ways to make this liberalisation permanent.”

Speaking with Pharmacy Daily this morning, Pharmacy Guild of Australia Victorian Branch President, Anthony Tassone, also backed retaining some of the emergency measures on a permanent basis.

“A number of measures that have been introduced for the benefit of patients and accessibility through the bushfires and the COVID pandemic, make a lot of sense to be ongoing,” he said.

“It utilises the expertise of pharmacists it helps ensure patients have access to important medicines, this should be the case all the time, not just when there’s an emergency.”