GP questions value of location rules

RESTRICTING schedule 2 and 3 medications to pharmacies is inflating prices, while restricting access, former Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) Expert Committee - Quality Care Chair, Dr Evan Ackermann, claims.

Responding to calls to loosen the pharmacy location rules to allow convenience stores to provide pharmacy services, Ackermann said that while he would not support prescription-only medicines being dispensed outside a pharmacy, he called for a review of S2 and S3 products, newsGP reported.

“A lot of them are [essentially] over-the-counter and should probably be allowed to have some wider distribution,” he said.

“Limiting these sort of drugs to pharmacy- or pharmacist-only has just pushed prices up.

“Pharmacists are supposed to establish a diagnosis or establish a reason for people taking S2 or S3 medications, but they often don’t and instead it’s often the pharmacy staff that [facilitate the sale].”

A spokesperson for the Pharmacy Guild of Australia suggested the College may need to focus on GP overprescribing of benzodiazepines, before criticising pharmacists, following an ABC 7:30 report on Mon night.

“It’s pretty rich for the RACGP to be focussing constantly on pharmacy and medicine schedules when their President Dr Harry Nespolon has admitted GPS are rampantly over-prescribing benzodiazepines,” the spokesperson said.

“And what is the RACGP response? “Run up the white flag, admit doctors are overprescribing, and then cravenly ask for more money to undertake longer consultations with the victims. Disgraceful.”

Speaking to the ABC, Nespolon conceded GPs were still over reliant on benzodiazepines despite being aware of the well-documented risks associated with long-term use of the medicines.