FEDERAL Health Minister, Greg Hunt, will not seek to amend pharmacy ownership rules despite pressure from medical organisations to allow GPs to become pharmacy owners.
Australian Medical Association (AMA) Vice President, Dr Chris Zappala, told ABC Radio Queensland that deregulating the community pharmacy sector would make the delivery of healthcare "more convenient", during an interview yesterday.
However, the Minister voiced his support for retaining the status quo, which has been endorsed by recent state government reviews of the ownership rules in Queensland and Western Australia.
"So we have a very, very clear set of rules regarding pharmacy ownership which follows in fact the recent reviews and we, through a bipartisan approach, reaffirmed those rules in the Parliament in the course of the last two years," Hunt said.
"So we've only just re-legislated in this space and there are no plans to change that."
Pharmacy Guild of Australia Victorian Branch President, Anthony Tassone (pictured), hit out at Zappala's push to allow doctors to own and co-locate pharmacies within "a hub centred on the GP that becomes a one-stop shop so the patients can get everything they needed done at their usual local general practice".
"The assertions by Dr Zappala that general practice-owned pharmacies would increase convenience for patients are at odds with the substantive evidence that formed a key part of the Guild's submission to the competition policy review that demonstrated that community pharmacies are more accessible for the Australian public than other services, including supermarkets, banks and medical centres," he said.
"You would be hard pressed to find a general practice in a town and not a pharmacy and that's largely thanks to pharmacy location rules that have helped disperse the PBS-approved community pharmacy network promoting equity of access," Tassone added.
"Maybe general practice should have location rules, instead of allowing itself to be corporatised?
"Maybe that would help distribute their network more effectively.
"Pharmacy ownership and location rules regulation is in place not for the benefit of community pharmacies but for the public.
"We need to be looking for solutions to the problems we are facing in our healthcare system, and a concern from consumers is about access to GPs -- not access to pharmacies or their local community pharmacist.
"The sooner we can have a mature conversation about the issues and challenges being faced by the Australian public in accessing healthcare, the better for patients."
The Consumers Health Forum of Australia voiced its concern that the ongoing turf war between the medical and pharmacy professions, does little for patients.
"The squabble between doctors and pharmacists does no good for consumers," the CHF said in a social media post, adding: "It's about health dollars not health care.
"[It's] time for each side to put patients' interests first - collaboration not competition."
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