Pharmacy Daily | Victorian CMO scraps 60-day script supply advice

A RECOMMENDATION that Victorian patients should seek a 60-day supply of prescription medicines has been pulled from the State's Chief Medical Officer's (CMO's) website.

Pharmacy Guild of Australia Victorian Branch President, Anthony Tassone, said that while the advice "may have been well meaning it was not helpful in the current circumstances".

Following the CMO's decision to revise the advice to say patients should obtain a 30-day supply, Tassone told Pharmacy Daily, that the initial recommendation had "inadvertently caused much panic in the Victorian community and placed a community pharmacy workforce already under pressure to endure more anxiety from patients who felt it was absolutely necessary to obtain 60 days' supply".

Tassone welcomed the CMO's decision to roll back his advice, but suggested "the genie may well already be out of the bottle".

"The initial advice did not take into consideration the standard Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) quantity should generally be sufficient for patients to have ongoing supply, pharmacists have legal and professional obligations in order for the supply of prescription medicines to be in accordance with the prescriber's intention and interests of the patient and the very real and unintended consequence of stock-piling by patients triggering medicine shortages meaning others may miss out," he said.

"This could have potentially dire consequences on a health system bracing itself for an unprecedented challenge in meeting the direct demands of what COVID-19 could bring without preventable hospitalisations due to patients inadvertently misusing medicines because there was too much at their home or some missing out altogether."

Pharmaceutical Society of Australia National President, Dr Chris Freeman, told Pharmacy Daily that he had written to the Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners to urge their members to refrain from providing regulation 24 prescriptions, following the Victorian CMO's recommendation.

"What we don't want is a disruption to the supply chain because of stockpiling," Freeman said.

Tassone noted pharmacies have been experiencing supply chain issues, with delayed deliveries in some areas over the weekend.