Pharmacy Daily | Make emergency orders permanent

FEDERAL, State and Territory health authorities are being urged to implement public health orders enabling continued dispensing to be implemented on a permanent basis.

With the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign set to commence in the coming weeks, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia has warned patients may struggle to obtain a prescription from the GP.

Guild Victorian Branch President, Anthony Tassone, said emergency measures "shouldn't be limited to pandemics or natural disasters", noting that current measures in Victoria are set to expire on 27 Mar.

"The ability of pharmacists to be able to provide their patients with one month's prescription medicine where obtaining a prescription from their doctor is not practicable during the COVID-19 pandemic has been of great value to maintain continuity of care during this difficult time," he said.

"However, patients continue to report challenges from time to time in seeing their GP to obtain a prescription for their usual medicines and this can occur at any time -- not just during a pandemic, and the Guild strongly feels that the authorisation of one month's emergency supply really must be ongoing.

"Continued dispensing originally commenced as an initiative under the Fifth Community Pharmacy Agreement, but prior to the COVID pandemic was limited to a very narrow range of medications including: statins and some oral contraceptives.

"It makes little sense from a patient's perspective that pharmacists can be trusted with continued dispensing of these two drug groups, but not a wider array of prescription medicines that can be extremely important in managing their health and chronic conditions.

"Who is to say that patients won't continue to face some difficulties in seeing their GP in the coming months with the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine in parallel with the annual influenza vaccination?

"We will never know how many patients were kept out of hospital during the COVID pandemic thanks to taking a very simple and sensible step of utilising our pharmacist's expertise -- but what we do know is if we don't allow our pharmacists to practice to their full scope, we are not doing everything we can to ensure the continuity of care of our patients."