A local pharmacist said Logan would be hit hard by prescription regulation changes, reaffirming the fear of medicine-shortages by pharmacists nation-wide.
The federal government introduced changes to dispensing rules at pharmacies to enable general patients and concession card holders to purchase two-months’ worth of medicine for the price of one.
Health minister, Mark Butler, said patients will save more than $1.6bn over the next four years.
As of 1 September, general patients will be able to save up to $180 a year per medicine and concession card holders will save up to $43.8 per medicine.
Similar rules have been successfully practised in other countries, including New Zealand, which allows 90-day scripts, and the UK, which allows scripts of up to 12 months.
However, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia has slammed the government’s decision – predicting severe shortages and longer wait times for patients.
Logan City Pharmacy pharmacist, Ariel Rosario, agreed with the guild’s predictions.
“Because of Covid, we’ve already experienced so many shortages to really important medications and this is just going to increase that,” Ms Rosario said.
“If people are getting twice the quantity at once, we’re going to be ordering more to keep up with that demand, which will increase the… shortages were experiencing at the moment.”
Ms Rosario said more condensed and less frequent orders would put a strain on supply.
“It sounds great, but it does come at a cost to all of us – doctors, pharmacists, and especially patients in the long run.”
She said pharmacies would be forced to lay people off because they’re bringing in less money.
She suggested it would be worse in Logan.
“A lot of us [pharmacists] have expressed our concern, especially in a place like Logan, where a lot of these people are on concession, which means we are relying on the government,” Ms Rosario said.
She said the repercussions of the changes were already present, despite not being effective until 1 September.
“We’ve already had people coming in asking for two months’ worth of their medications, maybe because they’re not quite sure what that means, or they’ve already thought that it started.
“People are just trying to stock up on too much medication.”
Ms Rosario said Logan pharmacists were “nervous”.
“I think we all are [nervous], especially because of the repercussions that could occur mostly to the patients,” she said.
“I mean, we all got into this industry to help, and I feel like this is just taking a big step backwards.”
The prescription changes will apply to 320 medicines, including those for chronic conditions such as heart disease, high cholesterol, Crohn’s disease and hypertension.
