2 Comments

  1. You can’t have it both ways. Location rules are the primary reason pharmacy is dead in the water. Investment requires deregulation. Pharmacy will wallow and continue to be a pseudo medical retailer in the community setting until the shackles of the great majority of pharmacists and financial capital are broken.

  2. The reason Location Rules came into existence in the first place was to create an even distribution of PBS services.
    This was at government insistence but it caused unintended fallout for our young pharmacists.
    A common problem with centralised government initiatives.
    Now the PBS as a product has ended its life cycle.
    What didn’t happen was a renewal process by pharmacy leaders who failed to grasp the opportunity to enhance the Location Rules to expand the range of public/private partnerships in areas of public health – a role that would have suited a pharmacy environment.
    Pharmacy would not be dead in the water if it had astute leaders who will position themselves to build on existing resources in an evolutionary manner.
    This is why we have the King Review – a centralised attempt to find a PBS replacement.
    While it is a pain in the butt it also represents an opportunity for pharmacy leaders to suggest a wide range of possible solutions that are compatible with government ideology and policy.
    Pharmacy can have it both ways if our leadership proposes win-win solutions and genuinely work at it.
    Despondency only sets in when you realise that pharmacy leadership is stuck in a vacuum and needs member stimulus to kick-start creation and innovation.
    Pharmacy financial capital should not be broken but should be given stimulus and direction so that investment provides adequate financial return that can flow through better employee wages and conditions, as well as providing better and expanded services to the public that can be funded internally.
    What we have under CPA agreements is a situation going nowhere because both sides are so entrenched in old style thinking, all they can do is waste energy in scapegoating one another.
    We need an explosion of ideas to blow up the “logjam”.

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