A chemist can own a supermarket, but supermarkets can’t own a pharmacy
THE Pharmacy Guild wants Coles and Woolworths banned from selling prescription medicines but says it’s okay to have a supermarket in a chemist.
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CHEMISTS who pressured politicians to ban Coles and Woolworths from selling medicine now want to give an award to a pharmacy with a supermarket inside it.
Before the 2013 election, the chemist owners’ union the Pharmacy Guild demanded both major parties sign a letter that would lock supermarkets out of selling subsidised prescription medicines.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott obliged, signing a letter promising “the Coalition continues to support the model of pharmacies being owned by pharmacists”.
Pharmacy Guild president George Tambassis is fighting to preserve the current ministerial monopoly rule that says only pharmacists can own a pharmacy in a new five-year government agreement.
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“Four of Woolworths’ five biggest selling products are cigarettes and it sells billions of dollars of alcohol each year- two major causes of disease and death,” Mr Tambassis said in a national newsletter to Guild members last year.
However, a recent Pharmacy Guild publication announces that SuperPharmacyPlus which contains an IGA x-press supermarket is one of six finalists vying for the Gild’s Pharmacy of the Year awards in 2015.
“SuperPharmacyPlus is a vibrant progressive community pharmacy … we also provide the convenience of an IGA x-press,” the pharmacy says on its website.
One of the six pharmacists that owns the Queensland pharmacy Roy Packer says the pharmacy had been nominated for the award because of the professional services it supplies including a diabetes educator, a lactation consultant, a dietitian and the way it followed up patients to ensure they complied with their medication, he said.
“No-one would look at it as a supermarket if they walked into the store,” he said.
A spokesman for the Pharmacy Guild said the awards were run by an independent panel of judges and he described the supermarket in SuperPharmacyPlus as “a bit of a quirk”.
“We don’t support pharmacies in supermarkets but this is different because the supermarket is owned by a pharmacist not a corporate entity,” he said.
“We don’t think that is double standards,” he said.
A federal ministerial determination contained in a Pharmacy Guild/government agreement prohibits the collocation of pharmacies in supermarkets and the Guild says the Queensland pharmacy with a supermarket inside it is covered by a grandfathering clause.
The Guild is currently due to start negotiating a new five year taxpayer funded agreement with the government worth over $15 billion to cover dispensing fees and mark ups on medicine prices under the nation’s drug subsidy scheme.
They want the government to continue the ministerial prohibition on supermarkets owning a chemist.
The Government’s National Commission of Audit last year called for Coles and Woolworths to be able to contain pharmacies and the Harper Competition Review last year said the monopoly pharmacy ownership rules were “unnecessary”.
The government’s Australian National Audit Office has been investigating whether the agreement that governs what government pays for pharmacy services is value for money but its report has been delayed by over seven months.
There are fears its investigation, rumoured to be highly critical, won’t be released before the government signs another five year deal with chemists.
A government price disclosure policy has revealed chemists were being paid 80 per cent more than the market price for generic medicines.
Medicines Australia, the peak pharmaceutical company lobby group has estimated the policy to crack down on this will save the taxpayer $20 billion in the decade between 2007 and 2017.
Originally published as A chemist can own a supermarket, but supermarkets can’t own a pharmacy
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