Pharmacy Daily | Board declines “practice” consultation

The Pharmacy Board of Australia has opted out of an Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency consultation to develop a common definition of “practice”. According to a communique following the Board’s most recent meeting late last month, seven of the ten National health profession boards are working on the paper. However the Pharmacy Board was of the opinion that the professions are different and that the current definition of practice suits the pharmacy profession and thus there is no need for consultation. At the meeting the Boards’s working party on Compounding also reported on an early draft of a possible expansion to current guidelines on Extemporaneous Dispensing to take into account “complex” compounding. Further work and wide ranging stakeholder consultation on the compounding guidelines are expected in the coming months. MEANWHILE the Board also noted the outcome of the Senate enquiry into the dramas in renewing registration experienced by some health practitioners under the new national scheme earlier this year. Recommendations include the reconstitution of the Professions Reference Group to consider improvements of AHPRA’s business processes. The Senate committee also suggested that the National Law be changed to allow AHPRA to have discretion to grant a grace period where a practitioner faces deregistration due to an administrative error by the agency.

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