Chemist slams dispense changes
A Cairns pharmacist has slammed the federal government for cutting funds to the pharmaceutical industry.
Kewarra Beach pharmacy worker Luana McFall said she took issue with the announcement of 60-day medication dispensing within the pharmaceutical
industry.
The incentive included in the federal budget will double the amount of medicine a pharmacy can dispense to a patient on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. This will effectively halve the dispensing fee for more than 320 medicines.
“People are saying that the money is going to go into GPs,
Medicare, you’re saving money during this, but the big issue is we can’t get the supply,” Ms McFall said. “Every day there’s at least five or more drugs out of stock.”
She said supply came from wholesalers and pharmacies could not control the amount of stock available to them.
“But people are saying, ‘oh if we stock up by September, we’ll be right’. Like no, if they can’t control it, we can’t access it. How are we supposed to stock up?” she questioned.
Ms McFall said shifting $3.5bn from the pharmaceutical industry to doctors, as announced in the federal budget, would exacerbate problems in the medical sector.
“When we heard the budget last night (Tuesday), it was very disappointing,” she said.
“It’s going to affect the viability of a lot of the local pharmacies, because their funding will get cut massively.
“For the Labor government to pull $3.5bn out of the pharmaceutical industry and then give it to the doctors I think is a little bit of a stretch, especially during Covid when a lot of the GPs were refusing to see patients and we picked up a lot of the load.
“At the end of the day, it’s a business just like doctors do business as well. If you’re going to cut funding, what are we supposed to do?” Ms McFall said.