PROFESSIONAL indemnity insurance premiums for pharmacists are likely to soar if their practice continues to expand, according to Sydney-based experienced medico-legal advisor and GP Dr Craig Lilienthal.
In a Medical Observer editorial published this week, Lilienthal warned pharmacists to "be careful what you wish for".
"Pharmacists pay between $200 and $300 per annum for their professional indemnity insurance.
"The underwriter for these policies, incidentally, is Guild Insurance, the highly profitable subsidiary owned by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia.
"The $200 to $300 figure contrasts with the fees for non-procedural GPs, who pay our MDOs (Medical Defence Organisations) around $5,000 per annum for their numerous protections and support should something go wrong."
Lilienthal, who worked for two decades in corporate medicine and is also a former President of the Doctors Health Advisory Service (NSW) and the Medico-Legal Society of NSW, wrote that "once the negligence claims start rolling in against pharmacists under, what to me is an artificially expanded scope of practice (and the claims will roll in), their lowly premiums are likely to skyrocket, and the poor chemists will have to scramble around for even more income to cover these costs".
Moreover, the majority of claims against doctors are successfully defended, but "my guess is that most of the claims against pharmacists will be indefensible because the pharmacists are not trained to diagnose and prescribe in the ways they think they are; they are not trained to take proper medical histories, and they are not trained to keep the necessary medical records".
"Further, pharmacists as yet have no understanding of the deep emotional stresses of litigation and the effect of this on their personal and professional lives," he added.
"The national push to have pharmacists diagnose, prescribe and dispense for a list of medical conditions is succeeding.
"Clearly the pressure is coming from two sources: the pharmacists who seek to improve their incomes, and politically sensitive ministers seeking to keep a lid on healthcare costs without doing anything difficult," Lilienthal noted.
"Most of the arguments against pharmacists playing doctors are correctly based on professional standards and conflicts of interest...the complication is that our governments appear to have no interest in professional standards, only sourcing political donations and electoral votes," he claimed.
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