The Luddites At The Pharmacy Guild Are Really Obstructionist Pains In The Bum!

This popped up a few days ago:

Dimec allows patients to choose pick-up point for prescriptions

A pharmacy app has announced it is the first service in the UK to allow patients to choose any high street pharmacy to collect their prescription.

Hanna Crouch – 3 May 2018

Dimec works by linking a patient’s phone directly to their NHS GP and pharmacy and then letting them pick where to collect medicines from at the touch of a button.

Prior to this, patients were required to contact their GP or Pharmacist to request to alter their pharmacy.

The update to the app means patients can now view and select high street pharmacies based on their current location their home address or scroll around the integrated map.

Chief technical officer and co-founder, Andrew Bailey, said: “We’ve been working exceptionally hard with our team, NHS Digital and GP system suppliers to get this new feature live.

More here:

https://www.digitalhealth.net/2018/05/dimec-chose-pharmacy-prescription-collection/

So in the UK – and in the US of course – you can direct where your pre-prepared meds will be waiting.

In Australia you can’t because the Pharmacy Guild wants us to have to select our pharmacy go in with our script and wait while they do the work – worried that if we could say where we want to pills to be waiting the nasty doctors might favour one pharmacy over another.

So nation-wide we have a zillion hours of waiting by the public to sooth Pharmacy Guild paranoia.

And to further reveal the professionalism of pharmacies we have this:

Pharmacies avoid homeopathy ban as government parks recommendations

By Kate Aubusson

3 May 2018 — 6:50pm

Homeopathic products will continue to be sold in Australian pharmacies, despite a long-awaited review warning the government the practice could compromise the health of consumers.

The federal government has accepted just three of the 45 recommendations made by the review of Pharmacy Remuneration and Regulation delivered to Health Minister Greg Hunt in September.

Releasing the final report and its response on Thursday, the government outright rejected three recommendations and merely “noted” more than 30, including restrictions on the sale of complementary medicines and reforms to pharmacy location rules.

A national real-time electronic drug monitoring system was one of three recommendations accepted. Another five recommendations were accepted “in principle”.

Chair of the review, Monash University economics Professor Stephen King, said he was pleased the government had accepted the e-records recommendation, saying it would bring Australian pharmacy into the 21st century.

But he was disappointed it had rejected or "not taken more action" on the bulk of the recommendations aimed at protecting consumers and ensuring fairer access to vital medicines.

The government did not accept a recommendation to ban the sale of homeopathic products, despite the review panel warning consumers could forego evidence-based medicines in favour of the products, “which may further compromise their health”.

The review also recommended complementary medicines be sold in a separate area from other medicines where pharmacists can provide information to consumers about the extent, and limitations, of the evidence of their efficacy.

Among the bulk of recommendations not accepted and merely “noted” were reforms to pharmacy location rules aimed at preventing local monopolies that stifle competition and hike up prescription prices.

It also noted a recommendation that would have banned pharmacies from raising or lowering the price of PBS medicines beyond the co-payment set by the government.

“Currently consumers are engaged in prescription lottery,” Professor King said.

“Depending on where you live and how many pharmacies there are, you will pay very different prices for the same medicines … we didn’t think this was fair.”

More here showing how patient convenience comes a long second for the Guild lobbyists! 
https://www.smh.com.au/national/pharmacies-avoid-homeopathy-ban-as-government-parks-recommendations-20180503-p4zd94.html

The response to the report has the Guild’s fingerprints all over it and while they behave like this they are just overqualified shopkeepers I reckon.

David.