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Why Large Pharmacies Must Develop
Traditionally, when pharmacists reach a mature point in their business and practice development, they have looked to increase their success by adding a new pharmacy to their collection. And sometimes more than two pharmacies, expanding to the legal limit of five or six (or even more using creative investment practices). While the gross profit capacity…
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The Workforce Summit, Senior Pharmacists, Aged Care & Designing a More Inclusive Succession System
The emergence of a “think tank” for Australian pharmacy ought to be a significant event, but you would never think so because it is so “low key”, It was recently responsible for the pharmacy profession’s first ever Australian Pharmacist Workforce Summit, ‘uniting our profession for a sustainable future’ – an event that was held on…
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Choice gives us the tick of approval
I guess we have arrived at last! Our professional expertise has been approved by Choice magazine – a publication which has been fairly critical of us over the years. Even made the front page of some pharmacy newsletters. But hold on………the tick of approval has nothing to do with our professional expertise, our role in…
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A Minor Ailment Scheme – Streamlining What We Have Always Done
The PGA has submitted a proposal to government for the provision of a minor ailments program. While pharmacists have provided this type of service for many years, a more streamlined and integrated version might well serve the community better. The Australian Self Medication Industry (ASMI) commissioned a study in 2008 and found that 15 percent…
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GP Practice Pharmacists – What is the Future?
Many of Australia’s accredited pharmacists have become frustrated with the “silo” they have been forced to occupy. The frustration was triggered when financing of HMR’s was manipulated so as to create “caps” on the numbers of reports that could be produced, and that a lower-level PGA inspired “Medscheck” was thrust on the scene that competed…
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I’ve been thinking about how the work we do today may impact the world we live in tomorrow
This afternoon, I received an e-mail from my friend George Laurer (to my right), the inventor of the UPC bar code—the very same code scanned on the items I purchased this morning at Costco and Trader Joe’s. It arrived on the anniversary (June 26, 1974) of the first bar-coded product being scanned at a point…
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Provider Numbers are the key to clinical services rollout
A few years ago I read a biography on the life of Joseph Stalin. The story of how Stalin rose to power and then ruled Russia with an unrelenting grasp for thirty years was quite an interesting read. Despite all his paranoia, ordered executions and sending millions to the gulags it is an interesting fact…
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The Gap Report & Its Opportunities
Self Care has been a platform of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia for as long as I can remember. It is good that it is at last receiving government recognition, particularly as it so easily fits a platform of patients taking responsibility for their own care and that the education required for patients is a…
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Reinventing the Condom with a range of useful benefits
A group of scientists in Australia is developing a series of condoms which it claims could feel even better than wearing nothing at all. A team at the University of Wollongong (UOW) have been experimenting with hydrogel materials, which they say have a range of benefits over latex. Ultra-strong and flexible, hydrogels have been around…
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New Study Creates a Guide for Pharmacy Clinics
As pharmacy moves slowly into the provision of clinical services, their design and delivery through specialised clinic formats will be a major consideration. Growing incrementally in need, primary health care is a traditional area for pharmacy that needs to build to a provider status. A study published in The Lancet, could help because it has…