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The Community Pharmacy Leaders Forum’s (CPLF) meeting in November considered a CPLF response to the incoming government and a wide range of pressing sector issues.
CPLF chair and Pharmacy Guild President Cameron Monteith says the Health and Disability System Review report presents a welcomed opportunity for our sector to help build a stronger health system.
Our members are keen to engage with the government and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet on their final decision making, and the implementation of the Review's recommendations.
CPLF sees this as an ideal fit with sector work already underway with DHBs on developing a sustainable funding and pricing model for community pharmacy services and addressing the sector’s professional pay parity concerns.
CPLF also discussed the importance of working to ensure community pharmacists continue to develop their role in supporting vaccinations, the need to address increasing out-of-stock medicine concerns and to resolve practical e-prescribing challenges.
“Pharmacy should be fully utilised in vaccination services, including with Measles, Mumps and Rubella and an eventual Covid-19 vaccine. Pharmacists – please ensure your vaccinator training is current, so you can best help your communities,” Mr Monteith says.
Medicine out-of-stocks, linked to global supply chain pressures, are increasingly raising concerns with PHARMAC’s sole supplier model and is creating extra work, costs and frustrations for pharmacies, which we will further address with PHARMAC and DHBs.
“We also share pharmacies’ concerns regarding e-prescribing. Everything must be ready to help the sector become 100% paperless, and more sector collaboration and work is necessary to ensure that this transition works smoothly” Mr Monteith says.
Other topics discussed included CPLF endorsing the Pharmaceutical Society’s Early Career Pharmacists (ECP) report as an excellent initiative to support ECPs’ career development.
Discussion also focussed on required service model development opportunities, including an intended repurposing of our Long-Term Conditions service to better address inequitable health outcomes, and how to promote mental health pharmacy services.
“We have agreed actions on all of these pressing sector issues and will review progress at our March 2021 meeting,” Mr Monteith says.
In this article, Sue Frankland looks at the global problem of wastage of medications, including causes such as overprescribing and non-adherence. She also presents information from her master’s dissertation on how people understand, and respond to, medication expiration dates
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