The Pharmacy Guild of New Zealand (the Guild) supports increasing community pharmacists’ role and the funded services community pharmacies can provide, as announced today as part of ACT’s Pharmacy First plan. We are also pleased to see ACT’s acknowledgement that community pharmacies are under serious revenue pressure. Sustainable funding remains a key priority for the Guild.
Community pharmacy is often the front door to healthcare, especially in rural communities, after-hours, and for patients struggling to access timely GP appointments. Pharmacists are highly accessible, highly trained and highly trusted healthcare professionals.
The Guild supports accessible, clinical healthcare delivered close to home. This includes increasing the funded services within the Extended Pharmacy Service (Minor Ailments Scheme), allowing pharmacists to order blood tests, pharmacy-based screening services, skin lesion assessments in pharmacy, and enabling accredited pharmacists to help manage stable patients with chronic conditions, subject to appropriate training and protocols.
Guild Interim Chief Executive, Glenn Mills says “This would be a positive continued step forward for patients, accessibility, and the growing role of pharmacy within primary healthcare. Most importantly, it makes getting care easier. Patients won’t need to wait days or weeks for a GP appointment or sit for hours in an emergency department. Instead, they can walk into their local pharmacy, often open extended hours, with no appointment needed, and receive timely care from a highly trained healthcare professional.”
However, the Guild does not support ACT’s proposed changes to pharmacy ownership and issuing new pharmacy agreements, as these would put community pharmacy’s ability to deliver these new services at risk.
Community pharmacy has been experiencing a workforce shortage for many years. Some pharmacies are already struggling to offer additional services as a result. There aren’t enough new pharmacists coming into the workforce and every time a new pharmacy opens, they ultimately employ staff from existing pharmacies, putting the sector’s ability to offer new services at risk. The Guild believes Health New Zealand has a responsibility to protect patient access and ensure quality service provision when assessing applications for new pharmacy agreements.
The majority five-pharmacy limit is intended to ensure effective control by pharmacist owners and prevent the pharmacy sector from being dominated by a few big players, like the supermarket sector, with those pharmacies focused on retail sales, not health services.
“As seen overseas, these big players are focused on profits and retail sales over patients, this means they have a reduced service offering and invest only in populated urban areas. Some countries have had to re-introduce restrictions following changes to address issues with market domination and reduced service access”, says Mr Mills.
As pressure across the health system continues to grow, funding pharmacies to do more simply makes sense. Pharmacies are embedded in communities. Many are open evenings and weekends. Patients can walk in, ask questions, and receive care quickly. This is exactly where community pharmacy adds value. However, we need to recognise and treat community pharmacy as critical health infrastructure to ensure pharmacies can increase services and better support patients.