If I think about the two things Canadians are going to need in 2025, it’s resilience and resourcefulness. Without getting into what’s happening with our neighbour to the south, it is clear we are all being called upon to see things through a different lens, and to find new ways of doing things.
I can think of no health profession better suited than community pharmacists to make it through the uncertain times we are in, and will continue to be in for some time.
Our new Board Chair, Colleen Hogg, shares a fine example of how the profession’s resilience and resourcefulness is leading the way in her community to ensure patients get the care they need.
When I cast my mind back to the early days of COVID, pharmacists showed up, hung shower curtains to create physical barriers, and met the challenge to get some 17,000 COVID vaccine shots, that were about to expire, into the arms of British Columbians. If anyone knows how to pivot, it is pharmacists and pharmacy owners.
This was going to be a challenging year regardless of who was elected in the U.S. The affordability crisis continues to be an overriding concern for all of us. The Federal and Provincial governments are facing many demands to turn around the declines in our health care systems. And the needs can’t be fixed overnight, no matter how much money there may be to spend.
Important steps are being taken to restore a primary and acute care system that truly meets the needs of patients, no matter where they live. And in community pharmacy, scope expansion to include diagnosing and prescribing for minor ailments and contraception is delivering access and cost savings. All signs are that offering patients a wider array of care in a pharmacy clinic setting is an important part of the primary care access solution.
And as the article in this issue of The Tablet demonstrates, we need to grant pharmacy technicians permanent authority to do immunizations.
Further expanded scope to include prescribing for stable chronic diseases by pharmacists in B.C. could make a meaningful impact on reducing the strain on family physicians. As with immunizations and minor ailments, there are important cost savings when pharmacists take on some of these clinical services.
As Colleen rightly notes, while pharmacists are resourceful and ready to go the distance for their patients, they can’t do this for fees that haven’t been adjusted in nearly 14 years. The foundational dispensing fee simply must be increased.
If pharmacy owners are to be able to provide more pharmacists to do more services, they cannot do so at 2011 compensation rates. Getting a dispensing fee increase, even in these most challenging financial times, is our priority.
Geraldine Vance
Chief Executive Officer
BC Pharmacy Association