Scott Lynda: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Scott Lynda: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
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Dr LYNDA SCOTT (NZ National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 I understand that Part 9 if the amendments are passed will become a separate bill. The Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill is going to be split into three bills. Part 9 deals with pharmacies and the way in which they will be owned and operated. 
When I was last speaking on this matter I said I had been in Cleveland with my good friend Judith Collins. I do not think this Government really understands the pressure that pharmacies and pharmacists are under at the moment. We went to two pharmacies one of which had just been ram-raided. The pharmacist was shocked. Even though she had put up all the security screens she then had to pay $45000 I think to put up those big metal posts to stop the shop from being ram-raided again. 
Parts of this bill talk about pharmacists and pharmacies having to be secure. Believe me they know the risks and costs of that! We understand the important role that pharmacists play in health care in New Zealand. As a geriatrician I was very aware that medications in the elderly are a big problem and often cause iatrogenic disease. People often get sick because of the pills they take. I was spending a lot of time taking people off those medications. Pharmacists do a fantastic job in this regard. They spend a lot of time looking at the medications that people take—looking at the interactions they could cause. Indeed every day of the week pharmacists pick up prescribing errors—all the time. They pick up interactions that may occur. 
Those sorts of things that pharmacists do often are not quantified or paid for. They spend their time learning about drugs and how they work in the body—especially in aged care and with young children. In those groups the medications can make someone very sick indeed. So pharmacists do a great job in that respect. They are among the most consulted health professionals. People often will go and have a talk to their pharmacist to find out what the pharmacist thinks a problem may be—whether the person needs to go to the doctor. In that regard we respect the work that pharmacists do and how competent they are to do that. 
In the past we have had the situation where a pharmacist could own only one pharmacy and certainly that rule has caused problems. It has caused problems in rural areas where maybe only part of a practice was really viable especially in smaller rural areas. So it has been increasingly difficult with decreasing populations for those pharmacies to remain viable. On this issue of pharmacists being able to own only one pharmacy there has been a great deal of debate about freeing up the system. The debate has gone on all around the world about allowing pharmacists to own more than one pharmacy and whether pharmacists need to own them at all. Those debates have occurred and I have looked at all the different areas of the world—for example in Europe and Britain where they have deregulated but they do have regulations as well that look at local needs. They look at access they look at improving quality health-care to improve it for the patients who need to use pharmaceutical services and to see a pharmacist. 
That has to be the bottom line really. It has to be about improving the ability of individuals to get access to medications in a way that improves their health care. That is what we do have to look for. We appreciate that medicines are not ordinary commercial items because medicines have that ability to make people very unwell. There are safety issues around the prescribing and dispensing of medications. The number of people who end up in hospital every day of the week because their drugs have made them sick is pretty extreme. It is always a matter of getting the balance right. We need to know that that risk is monitored and that that is very clear in any changes that one makes. 
A big problem at the moment of course involves the manufacture of methamphetamine and P. People manufacturing that have got it from pseudo-ephedrine which is a very common substance in cold remedies. 
JUDY TURNER (United Future) 
: 
 United Future has given serious consideration to the many opinions offered on the issue of deregulation of pharmacies and our decision is that at this time we will support the intent of the legislation in this regard. Pharmacists have to contend with a range of interventions that involve their profit margins—namely Pharmac price-setting co-payments district health board contracts and in recent times a return to stat dispensing fees. All these interventions serve to cramp the competitive opportunities for pharmacists. United Future feels that the partial deregulation set out in the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill is sufficient at this time. 
I take the opportunity to endorse the comments of others who have spoken with high regard of the pharmacy services that are provided by our pharmacy professionals here in New Zealand. We must never lose sight of the fact that that profession is an essential primary health service and at a time when New Zealanders are facing shortages of staff in certain areas of the health profession it is important that we look after the interests of pharmacists so that we do not start to face a crisis in that area as well. United Future will be supporting the bill as is and we have serious concerns about what the huge step of full deregulation would mean to the industry at this time with the many issues that it is facing at present.