Page 54 - RPA Magazine December 2020

52 2020 YEAR IN REVIEW Chart 1: Growth in number of patients visiting community pharmacies during Covid-19 Sources: GuildData (n = 397 pharmacies), www.covid19data.com.au FROM PAGE 51 that over the three months to September 2020, the most frequently visited health service in Australia was a pharmacy, with almost double the number of visits to a GP. Pharmacists were also rated the most accessible health service provider during this period. During this period of uncertainty, apart from community pharmacists attending to the clinical needs of their patients through dispensing and providing a range of valuable community pharmacy programs, they have assisted in many other ways. For example, survey research shows that, among other things, community pharmacists personally delivered medications, visited the sick in their homes, provided unpaid counselling, frequently worked extended hours to accommodate patient needs, and in some cases organised and personally provided transport to appointments for patients. Opportunities for long-term reforms This year highlights the important role community pharmacies can feasibly continue to play into 2021 and beyond. For example, total vaccinations administered by community pharmacies grew by 56 per cent in 2019-20 compared with the previous year, largely driven by growth in dTpa (24.5 per cent) and influenza (57.6 per cent) vaccinations. Community pharmacies are an accessible health destination for administering the Covid-19 vaccines when these become available, but also a wider range of regular vaccines. One critical reform for the benefit of patients is expansion of the PBS continued dispensing arrangements. Continued dispensing has been met by pent-up demand among patients, with GuildData showing a five-fold rise between March 2020 and April 2020, allowing patients the ongoing support they need in difficult circumstances. This is an important reform measure that could be made permanent to assist patients, recognising it is part of community pharmacists’ full scope of practice. Continued dispensing ticks the boxes as a smart long-term reform that governments at both state/territory and federal levels should be pursuing. The Covid-19 experience also highlights other areas where the valuable network of community pharmacists can be utilised to the benefit of patients and the wider health system. For example, embedding community pharmacists in primary healthcare through the establishment of an in-pharmacy consultation style model for professional services has tangible benefits beyond the Covid-19 period for patients, the wider health system and the public purse. This is not an untested experiment: community pharmacists are highly trained and are already providing services. Australia lags similar international jurisdictions in utilising community pharmacists in this way. Another transformative reform that was already underway but has been accelerated because of Covid-19 is the use of electronic prescriptions (e-scripts) as an alternative to traditional paper-based prescriptions. The benefits of e-scripts are obvious: prescribing and dispensing medicines can be more efficient through a reduction in prescribing and dispensing errors and removing the need for handling and storing a physical paper prescription. Moreover, e-scripts complement services such as telehealth (another innovation that has accelerated during the Covid-19 period) in overall patient care. There is some way to go in e-script implementation – with e scripts being implemented in Covid-19 hotspot areas before being more widely utilised. The Active Script List model of e-scripts will enable community pharmacists, authorised by their patients, to access an up to date and complete record of currently prescribed medicines, creating benefits for medication management and safety. The ‘digitalisation’ of many aspects of healthcare provision will continue beyond 2020, with recent surveys of the community pharmacy network indicating an increasing interest in adopting technologies such as artificial intelligence, further use of robotics and click-and-collect facilities. RETAIL PHARMACY ASSISTANTS • DEC 2020