The title was.
Healthy gains for pharmacists
Author: Edmund Barton
The article discussed the Fifth Community Pharmacy Agreement which was recently agreed with the Commonwealth Government and which will be revealed in detail on Budget night we are told.
The relevant paragraphs for the e-Health Community are as follows:
“She said the agreement also encouraged pharmacies to use electronic prescriptions.
This is a nice little earner, indeed, for the PGA Those e-prescriptions will be handled by the its eRx system, not the Medisecure system endorsed by the College of GPs.
They will attract a taxpayer subsidy of 15c per prescription with another 10c charged by the PGA. Within five years, this could be costing the Government about $18million a year and earning the PGA about $12million.
More than 3700 pharmacies, doctors and medical specialists are reported to be eRxready, although it was launched only a year ago.”
I have to say that this is a totally pathetic outcome in my view. The only way e-prescribing should be sponsored by the Government is via a Vendor Independent Standards Based approach operated as a public good by an agency like Medicare or my proposed ‘e-Health Australia’.
See here:
http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2010/05/2010-budget-and-e-health-what-must-be.html
We can only hope there is a confused journalist out there!
To hand the Pharmacy Guild a monopoly of this sort is just dreadful public policy in my view.
Can anyone, who has the details, confirm / deny this report?
David.
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