The Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Queensland, welcomes the signing of the Seventh Community Pharmacy Agreement (7CPA), announced just weeks before the 6CPA was due to expire on 30 June 2020. The 7CPA deal will lay foundations for change, while delivering stability and certainty for more than 1,200 Queensland community pharmacies on the primary healthcare frontline.
The Chair of the Pharmacy Guild’s Pharmacy Viability Committee, chief negotiator for the Agreement and Queensland Branch President, Professor Trent Twomey, said that the recent bushfires and coronavirus pandemic have shown the importance of the community pharmacy network, their resilience under extreme conditions and the essential role they play in providing primary healthcare to all Queenslanders.
“The 6CPA paved way for a lot of positive reform. The next five years is critical to continue laying the foundation for change needed to support further integration of community pharmacy into primary healthcare.”
“Over the five-years of the 6CPA, professional pharmacy programs received $1.26 billion in funding. It’s a crucial component and win for community pharmacies that professional program funding will continue so we can ensure community pharmacists practice to their full scope.”
“In the 6CPA’s 5-year lifetime, community pharmacies dispensed well over a billion prescriptions safely and effectively to Australian primary healthcare patients, many at a subsidised price.”
“We fought for community pharmacy to ensure the destructive idea of 60-day dispensing wasn’t implemented in the 7CPA. The measure would have single-handedly seen a worsening of patient’s quality use of medicine and increase the risk of medication misadventure.”
“I am confident that the outcome of this epic negotiation process is in the best interests of Queensland patients and the local community pharmacies who continue to serve them so well. The Agreement we have arrived at contains a number of reforms that will benefit patients for many years to come.”
“I look forward to sharing further positive 7CPA outcomes for Queensland community pharmacies in the coming months,” said Professor Twomey.
The 7CPA is due to come into effect on 1 July 2020. The agreement provides certainty for both the Commonwealth and community pharmacies that are tasked with the effective supply of PBS medicines on behalf of taxpayers to the maximum benefit of patients.
