David Seymour: Associate Health Minister on the proposal to let pharmacists prescribe some funded medications

Help for struggling pharmacies could be on the way. 

The Government's proposing letting pharmacists prescribe funded medicines for conditions like scabies and conjunctivitis, so people no longer have to see a GP or pay the full pharmacy price. 

It would also cover medication for UTIs and the emergency contraceptive pill. 

Associate Health Minister David Seymour told Mike Hosking smaller, local pharmacies are really battling. 

He says this would be a way to use them while taking pressure off emergency departments and GPs. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From the old common Sense file and expanded role for
your community pharmacists that will be able to assess patients,
provide consultation, supply funder treatment. David Seymore's the Associate Minister
of Health. Of course these with us morning, good morning.
What they can do. Is this a starting point or
is this it.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Well, as far as the government's concerned today, farmak are
going to change the way that they fund things. At
the moment, they'll fund a lot of these medications if
a doctor prescribes it, but not if a pharmacists does so. Bureaucratic,
I know, but now we know about that. We're changing
it to free things up because a pharmacy should be
the healthcare professional nearest to you. We've got this massive

(00:37):
network of knowledgeable people in community pharmacies that are really struggling.
You know, For as long as I've been a local MP,
I visited the local pharmacies. They are really battling. Some
have closed down. It's very sad. So let's find a
way to use them better. Meanwhile, we take pressure off
emergency departments and GPS, and we can also get people
much easier care. If your kid's got one of these conditions,

(01:00):
fever of scapies, oral dehydration or whatever. We're making it
part of the pharmaceutical schedule where you pay your five
dollar fee or if you've got a Community Services card
you pay nothing in order to get much faster treatment
for these things.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
So this is more about they are doing this anyway,
it just becomes cheaper.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, they can do most of this stuff, but it's
not funded under the pharmac's schedule, and as a result,
people have an incentive to go to their GP or
even show up at an ED because they're going to
pay more for the prescription out a pharmacist. At the moment,
we're leveling that playing field, but in the long term,
I would like to see pharmacies doing a lot more stuff.

(01:43):
Like give you an example. While back, people from the
Skin Cancer Society came to Parliament checked out a whole
lot of MPs. A couple of them actually caught that
they had potential skin cancers, and I thought, well, why
can't you go to a pharmacy, pay a small fee
and get this done instead of paying a lot more
to go to a g your hospital. That's the kind
of thing.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
When you say that your skin cancers are I mean
headlights is one thing. Skin cancer is another thing. I mean,
you're dealing with a real level of expertise or pharmacists
may not have.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, let's find out where those barriers are. Though by
coming that, the wider point here is that at the
moment we're really short on skilled people and if there
are activities that can be done by somebody who's not
currently doing it and it's perfectly safe and in the
case of these checks for your skin, I actually talked
to the experts who were on site that day and

(02:32):
they said, yeah, look, this could be done more widely,
but there's been some bureaucracy that stops it. That's what
we've got to do is be guided by true clinical
guidance rather than bureaucracy, because we just don't have the
resources and the people to leave opportunities on the table
through red tape.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
All right, nice to talk to you, David Seymore, Associate
Minister of Health, with us this morning.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
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