Scott Lynda: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Scott Lynda: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8174] 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT (NZ National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 Part 9 is about pharmacies the restrictions on ownership and the provisions under which they operate. Pharmacies in this country are reeling at the moment. Why? Because of stat dispensing. As a geriatrician I was very well aware that it was a sensible move to go to monthly dispensing. I used to go into people’s houses to assess elderly people and I used to take shopping bag after shopping bag of medication out of their houses. Not only was a lot of money being wasted but the medication made people sick. People used to share the pills around. If one pill was good they would have six of them. People got very muddled about what they were taking. 
That led to something called closed control where medication was put into little pop-out packs. Pharmac these days changes the medication that people get—the colour the shape. It is the same generic drug but the appearance changes a lot and that really confuses older people. So rather than their trying to figure out every day what to do with all the different medication under what is called closed control it now is put into a pack showing the day and the time to take it. 
Pharmacists have paid for that. They have basically subsidised it out of the money they have been getting. They have done it for all the rest homes and all the elderly people who are a bit confused about their medication but they have never really been paid for it. They have just done it. Now because stat dispensing has gone—we are going to 3-monthly dispensing—pharmacists will lose 30 percent of their revenue. Because of that loss they will not be able to take on interns. There are a whole lot of pharmacy interns who cannot get positions. 
We will see pharmacy closures in rural areas. I went to Clevedon the other day with my associate health spokesperson Judith Collins. A pharmacist there said there is no doubt about this; she has worked out the impact of stat dispensing on her pharmacy and it is going to close. She works next to a doctor’s practice and that closure will mean that people in Clevedon in rural outlying areas of Auckland will not be able to get access to medication. Nor will the people of Wakefield; Wakefield near Nelson is another place that is affected. The pharmacists there have said they will be closing the pharmacy. So pharmacists are reeling under what has happened to them due to Pharmac and the Minister of Health making these changes. 
This bill talks about partial deregulation which means that 51 percent of a pharmacy business needs to be owned by a pharmacist and that a pharmacist can own up to five pharmacies. This is the situation currently in Australia. It is quite a move from the situation here at the moment where pharmacists can have only one pharmacy. We are really concerned about protecting access in rural areas and improving that access but the Minister’s clause 254—and we will be supporting Heather Roy’s amendment—states that she can determine by Order in Council that a pharmacy can be owned by any particular community organisation or person if she believes that health services or access to those services in that location will be improved. This is all about the Minister wanting primary health organisations to be able to own pharmacies. She wants to nationalise primary health-care in this country. She has already done it with the doctors. She has forced them to join primary health organisations because they get no access to new funding if they do not join. Now she wants primary health organisations to be able to own pharmacies as well. 
The Minister has made disparaging comments about pharmacists being in retail as well. Well it is the retail part of their businesses that cross-subsidises some of the other activities that pharmacists do. But now they are going to have to tell the district health boards that they cannot do those things any more for free and that the boards will have to pay them. If the boards want closed control if they want pharmacists to dispense medication they are going to have to pay them to do that. I was in Kaikoura the other day and the pharmacist there took me through some of the accounts. He showed me that to provide certain things like methadone costs him more; it costs him an awful lot. So I am afraid that the district health boards will actually have to pay pharmacists for what they do.