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Australia’s Health Care System Funding Needs Fixing
Australia’s health system funding is beginning to exhibit signs of stress. Is this by accident or by deliberate design? Health out of pocket expenses are beginning to climb and many common medical procedures are now funded by drawing down from a patient’s superannuation fund -sufficient monies to cover costs. Health advocates are concerned about the…
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OMNS – Fat is My Friend
(OMNS Jan 17, 2018) Throughout 2017 I kept saying “This looks like the year that the whole fat-cholesterol-heart disease hypothesis falls apart.” Well for once it looks like I was right. Today (I write on Jan 1st 2018) the annual review from Diabetes.co.uk carries 3 game-changing headlines from the past year: “Saturated fat myth challenged” “High carb…
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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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Analysis of new and Existing Global Retail Market Entrants and Their Effect on all retailers and Australian Pharmacy, and the Privatisation of Health
Indications are that at least two global retailers are in the process of setting up shop in Australia – Amazon, and the German-based Kaufland group (both having selected distribution sites in Melbourne), and a third, Costco, recently arrived in Australia, has major expansion plans. Aldi, established in Australia since the year 2000, has significantly altered…
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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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The Race to the Bottom
The McDonald’s Big Mac is an icon of take-away eating – let’s face it………..can you remember when you first enjoyed one so many years ago? It’s a guilty pleasure to say the least, but as far as hamburgers go, it is far from the best. In reality, if we were to taste an assortment of…
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Orthomolecular Medicine News Service – They’re Back! The Pharmaceutical Shills
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” (Upton Sinclair) Now there’s yet another article cautioning readers to not take vitamins because they may somehow increase the risk for lung cancer. [1,2] Attacks pushing drug treatment, in preference to less expensive and more effective…
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What turf war??
Why do we keep apologising so much? I wrote on my Facebook page recently how concerned I was at the perceived turf war between GPs and pharmacists. One of the first comments was that I was “doctor bashing”. It seems normal these days that rational, sensible discussions are a thing of the past. Now, you…
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Orthomolecular Medicine News Service (OMNS) – Media Medicine: Have You No Sense of Decency?
They picked the wrong day to announce that a “Study finds 275,000 calls to poison control centers for dietary supplement exposures.” I am just in the mood to take this on. Why? Because the same poison control centers report zero deaths from any dietary supplement. See for yourself at http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v13n02.shtml Now take a look at the supplement-bashing…