Lanny Wong: Mangawhai Pharmacy director on the rise in safety concerns following two accidental overdoses

A pharmacist says her industry's under an unsustainable amount of pressure, off the back of two high-profile cases.

New reports revealed a pharmacist failed to consult a man's GP three times on his blood thinner medication before he suffered a fatal brain bleed.

Meanwhile, a Dunedin woman suffered an overdose of fentanyl after being given six times her prescribed dosage.

Mangawhai Pharmacy director Lanny Wong says we need to rethink how pharmacists are funded.

"For the last two decades, we've been doing the same type of work for less. So in order to keep our business viable, we need to dispense more prescription."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Ever do for c Ellen.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Concerns are being raised about the safety of prescriptions after
two more reports of incorrect dosage. Now a Dunedin woman
has suffered an overdose of fentanyl after being given six
times her prescribed dosage, and a man has passed away
after a pharmacist saw anomalies in his blood from the
blood thinning medication he was on, but didn't send him
back to his GP like he should have. Lanny Wong
is the director of mung A Phi Pharmacy and with us.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Hey Lanny, Hey ha, her i'skulty again.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, it's good to have you back with us. Thank you.
Are these isolated incidents or is something bigger going on here?

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Look, you know it's I think errors do happen, like
it definitely does happen. I'm not saying, you know, ifarms
are such perfect. This is one of those things that
definitely happened, and I think, you know, the media is
definitely highlighting it. I think there's a lot of interest
in why this is happening, which is which is probably
a good thing, but also very sad to finally talk
about this so openly, you know, you know, on the

(00:52):
backs of such a sad case.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Problem here is I mean, in at least two of
the incidents, the problem could well be that that perhaps
you know, somebody had failed to double check, or they
had double checked and just not had their brain turned on.
But in the one with the failing to send the
doctor back to the sort of failing to send the
patient back to the GP, what.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Happened there, Yes, it's very hard for me to comment
on that case without knowing all the full details. But
you know, like I would always go back to saying,
you know, pharmacists are definitely under pressure, Like we're you know,
our work. You know, the way we're funded is that
we are being funded to do more prescription, like you know,
the you know, as we want our business to be

(01:32):
vibe or we need to keep up with the amount
of prescription that we do, so you know, we're funded
for volume rather than value. So you know, that's always
at play every day in the community pharmacy. How we
how we manage our workloads that we need to go
through all the script If we don't hit the target,
then we're making a lost kind of thing, if that
makes sense. So there's always that pressure and it's definitely

(01:56):
unsustainable because our uplift hasn't actually kept up with inflation,
so for the last two decades, we're doing the same
type of work for less. So in order to sort
of keep up, you know, keep our business vibal, we
need to dispense more prescriptions. So that that is that
is not sustainable, put it that way, and we need
we need to rethink that.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Lanny. It's good to talk to you. Thank you, Lanny Wong,
director of mang a Phi Pharmacy.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
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Speaker 2 (02:24):
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