Learn to please your pharmacist
How can GPs stop being hated by pharmacists?
Pharmac medical director Peter Moodie used the phrase in a lighter vein towards the end of his presentation on generic medicines at the Goodfellow Symposium in March.
The aim was to highlight the long-pending issues with prescribing software used by GPs that perpetuate prescribing errors, making pharmacists’ life difficult.
The oft-repeated errors include prescribing unsubsidised brands, prescribing brands that don’t even exist and not recognising that a drug has a Special Authority.
Dr Moodie’s presentation succeeded in drawing GPs’ attention to the issue and brought out their own frustrations with what one GP called a decade-old problem with his practice management software (PMS).
Kaeo pharmacist Viv Bath, however, sought to clarify on behalf of her professional colleagues that they didn’t really hate GPs.
“I don’t know any pharmacists who hate GPs. My local GPs are also my friends who often fix things for me at my request. But I do hate the cumbersome bureaucratic system we deal with,” Ms Bath says.
“I believe the fault must lie with the PMS because they all seem to struggle.”
Dr Moodie said Pharmac is working with the PMS vendors to swat out some of the bugbears. All sorts of options are being considered for this, including a proposal to switch to generic prescribing and using colour-coding and pop-ups to facilitate correct prescribing.
Ms Bath says generic prescribing is not without its own problems. Oral contraceptives, for instance, don’t work generically since the PMS leaves out their strengths.
On a similar note, Wellington pharmacist Graeme Blanchard is trying to get everyone to take note of what pharmacists have to put up with, and is urging quick action. He thinks the drug funding agency has made the funding system so incredibly complex that prescribers have been left behind.
“They should have become reliant on their PMS to guide them into prescribing accurately. But those systems had never kept up with the changes. Unfortunately, no one jumped up and down loudly enough to get them fixed. The prescribers should have, but obviously didn’t.”
Ms Bath says pharmacists have had to bear the brunt, with not so much as an acknowledgement for their troubles all these years.
She quotes colleagues as saying, “we get the stick via our audits while GPs get paid to do it right”.
Mr Blanchard thinks Pharmac holds a lot of power throughout the industry to organise PMS systems to be fixed and has even given them a list of what he has identified as the most obvious issues.
“I found these issues were not well understood…My time was spent working with them to understand the effect on pharmacy of what the Ministry of Health, DHBs and pharmacy consider errors, but prescribers give little thought to,” he says.
His work with the New Zealand College of GPs, Capital & Coast DHB, Hutt Valley DHB, associate health minister Peter Dunne and the Audit and Compliance, Mr Blanchard says, has elicited some sympathy.
“To me, the next group we should be targeting is the Medical Council. They have a zero tolerance for errors, yet have sat back and let their members perform appallingly for many years while pharmacy has covered for them with little appreciation. I am surprised that the health and disability commissioner hasn’t been berating them for years,” he says.
“We sure could have done with the help.”
<< Back