Full disclosure from Guild
October 26, 2011
THE Pharmacy Guild has today
announced that its healthlinks.net
offshoot “will move to ensure
disclosure to consumers of
professional or administration fees
paid to pharmacists by sponsor
pharmaceutical companies for IT
facilitated professional programs”.
The move follows the ongoing
controversy over the $7 fee paid by
Pfizer for referral of patients to its
Lipitor patient support program.
The Guild said the professional
payments are appropriate “and
could hardly be deemed excessive.
“Therefore, as health
professionals, pharmacists have
nothing to hide,” according to Guild
President Kos Sclavos.
“These programs focus on
medication compliance which is
universally acknowledged as a
desirable health care goal,” he said.
Fairfax newspapers have today
highlighted other payments made
by GlaxoSmithKline for medication
compliance programs, but the Guild
has defended them as “important
beneficial professional programs
which the Guild supports.”
Under the GSK programs no
private patient information is
relayed to the manufacturer, and
existing GuildCare consent forms
already disclose that payments
from sponsor firms may be made in
some cases.
Sclavos said that most of the
advice given by community
pharmacists to patients all over
Australia every day is given free of
charge to the patient, without any
payment to the pharmacist.
“Where a payment from another
source, such as a pharmaceutical
company, underpins the provision
of a service to a patient, it is fair to
expect that such an arrangement is
disclosed, and the Guild supports
the decision by healthlinks.net to
ensure that disclosure is made,”
Sclavos added.
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