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Social Justice Programs – An Opportunity for a Patient Engagement and Health Literacy Expansion
Now that Location Rules have been made more certain through enabling legislation, it provides a level of certainty in respect of investing in services which would provide a community benefit, that in turn, could eventually be funded through government along the already familiar experience of a public/private partnership. i2P has previously expressed the opinion that…
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An Opportunity Opens Up – Will Pharmacy Leaders Grab It?
As pharmacists and coalface health practitioners we accumulate a lot of knowledge that other health practitioners do not have access to. This is because we are the only health profession that does not require a payment from a patient to access our physical pharmacy space. In addition, pharmacy culture has always allowed pro bono professional…
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Pro Bono Pharmacy Services Create a Social Dividend
Pharmacists have always embraced a culture where service provision for health problems have been provided free of charge to local communities, while the physical product that resulted as a solution to those health problems attracted a monetary value. In contrast, GP’s charged for their services (consultations) and basically avoided selling products. Given that pharmacists and…
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Scotland’s Pharmacist Practitioner Champions
Perhaps it is because of my Scottish heritage, but I am continually dawn to the Scottish business model for community pharmacy, funded and developed in a genuine partnership between community pharmacists and government. One of its lesser publicised components is the funding of “Practitioner Champions”. It’s not a lot of money (£300,000 funding for this year),…
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Depressive illness – can we get involved?
The challenge of mental health is something in which we are intimately involved. How many of our patients struggle with SSRI and SNRI medications, only to struggle further with their symptoms and feelings. It is well known that many drugs modify normal and abnormal behaviours by changing the amounts of particular neurotransmitters present within the…
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Blockchain – a trust system that could underwrite health information exchanges and integrate with other trust systems.
Blockchain is a relatively new technology system that can be customised to transact trusted actions, not being under a centralised control involving governments or banks. It is closely associated with the concept of Bitcoin, which is described as a form of financial currency called “cryptocurrency”. Many new cryptocurrencies have been launched, most emulating Bitcoin’s success in…
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The Productivity Commission Recommendation to decouple pharmacists from dispensing mirrors a progressive Scottish community pharmacy culture
Community Pharmacy Scotland (CPS) is the organisation which represents community pharmacy owners throughout Scotland in almost every aspect of their working lives, and is the voice of these vital healthcare professionals north of the English Border, as they deliver pharmaceutical care to the people of Scotland. It is therefore, the Scottish equivalent of the Pharmacy…
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Pharmacy Care- a Search for Competition?
It’s some time since I caught up with Seth Godin (the international marketing guru with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of words of wisdom and inspiration). One of his recent quotes caught my eye: “In search of competition- The busiest Indian restaurants in New York City are all within a block or two of each other.…
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Scottish pharmacy – a public/private partnership that encourages pharmacist clinical development.
Scotland has long displayed a talent for identifying the care role for pharmacists and expanding that role by supporting clinical aspirations for pharmacists, and made central to their total National Health Service delivery. The HealthierScotlandStrategy document published in August 2017 and titled ‘Achieving Excellence in Pharmaceutical Care’ aims to “strengthen the role of pharmacy in both hospital and…
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Pharmacists are primary in healthcare and its economics
One of the most successful marketing slogans ever developed by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia (PGA) was: “Ask your family chemist – he knows!” The public response to it was massive and just seemed to hit the right nerve. Its popularity eventually irritated the medical profession who couldn’t understand how a pharmacist might know more…