‘People my age were actually getting excited’

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I'm currently sitting in my pharmacy in Richmond that I own, operate with my son Billy. And I've had numerous roles and elected positions at the Pharmacy Guild over the years, culminating as the national president for seven years or so. I'm currently a state president, of Victoria. Some history in doing some directorships on various companies. ASX-listed companies, the companies and also private companies like King's Transport, API and Wellex. I finished all those now.

So most of my time is taken up at the moment is doing a little bit of consulting for companies like DBG, like Arrotext for the biologics and the biosimilars. Arms a little bit of consulting for some emerging cannabis companies, a small finance company I consult for. But generally speaking, I'm the locum for my pharmacy. So if Billy or one of the pharmacists here at Richmond for example, needs time off or I was taking holidays, or was sick, they call me.

So for example, this week I've been lucky I didn't have to work in my pharmacy, but next week I've got at least three stints that I have to do in Richmond. The pharmacists have various other responsibilities.

So the Pharmacy Guild was up in arms. That's how the community pharmacy agreements were created. That's when the location rules got created. So I was a proprietor when all that really big reform and change was happening and I didn't really know what was going on. But the guild kept me informed because I was a 22, 23-year-old almost just obviously just put myself into debt.

And this strange organisation called the Pharmacy Guild reached out to me and said, we would like you to go and door knock around the Preston area and tell everyone that our dispensing fees are reducing from 25% to zero. And you explained that to people in their homes, said, oh yeah, I think I can do that. So that's what we did. And then from there on, obviously I hadn't even joined the Guild then. They just wanted proprietors to help out.

So we helped out and that's when the community pharmacy agreements were formed. A guy called Colin Johns, which I just spent some time with him yesterday in Adelaide. He was the Pharmacy Guild president. Then he negotiated a five year deal with Bob Hawke and the minister of the day, the health minister of the day, Peter Staples and the community pharmacy agreements were born.

So I got involved with the Guild because of that I suppose dramatic entry into business that I had anyway, and not straight away, but eventually I started putting my hand up to go to committee meetings and representing the Guild of various meetings and stuff. And eventually I got elected as an elected official in a district in Victoria and I made my way through the boards, became state president, national president, and back to state president now.

So the Guild's been obviously part of my career from almost day one in various shapes and forms and the Guild obviously has given me more than I've given it, but I've obviously tried to assist where I can. But in all that time I've also bought and sold quite a few pharmacies. So my career has also been as a proprietor, either bringing in junior partners like my son at the moment, but various other business partners through 30 odd years have come in and out of

our businesses have done really well, not so well. They've been great partners, not so great partners. We've had our ins and outs and in that process I've always enjoyed working as a community pharmacist because at the end of the day you're dealing with people every day. So not only am I dealing with business partners and staff members and pharmacists and pharmacy assistant, but on a day-to-day basis, I know what the community's doing as well. Community's coming in, they're seeing what we do,

we see what their issues are. And from that, literally we take all that feedback back to the Guild, which is our representative body. And we've been able over the years to make some changes in community pharmacy, some really, really big ones like instead of just dispensing vaccines, we can now administer prescribing that, administer them instead of just dispensing an antibiotic for a urinary tract infection, now we can prescribe it, diagnose it, prescribe a simple one, and also dispense.

So the public have brought us along in that journey and that's because Guild officials and guild representatives like me are usually in their pharmacies anyway. So we get that feedback and we get that personal touch with our patients and sometimes lo and behold, those patients are actually decision makers. You never, never know when the next person's going to walk in your pharmacy. They might end up being the prime minister in 10 years or the health minister.

I had that happen to me with Greg Hunt. He came into our pharmacy up in cows once and he was delightful. He was just a back bencher then though, and fast forward 10 years, he became the health minister. He remembered coming into our pharmacy and was treated so well and had some really good reflections. And he'd always mentioned that when he made a speech that I can't believe that the national President of the guild was a guy that invited me to

the pharmacy in Cowes once. And he was like, the staff was so nice to me and they told me about all the stuff they were doing. We were doing a grand opening, we were just changing our brand. We just invited him. He was a local member. We had no idea who he was, but he just got a really, really good taste of pharmacy that he wouldn't have had otherwise.

So that's where community pharmacy has always been able to advocate for different changes and reform and practise changes because we're always dealing with the community that you're in. So we usually go to bat for them and they go to bat for us, so to speak.

We've been fortunate that in every other state and territory except Victoria, it's already been announced that that's the case. We're getting very close in Victoria, both Premier Jacinta Allen and the health minister Minister Thomas has basically said, look, we are just going through the process, but we're getting there. They had an internal review they were doing. They are very, very keen to support us in exactly the same way as Queensland and the other

states. We're fortunate enough to have the PSA has developed a training module, a training, whole training course to upskill our staff, our pharmacists in Victoria when and if that announcement gets made and the legislation gets changed. So we are ready to go, but that's still the Guild's not well priority because it's not over the line yet. So it's certainly something that we're focusing on.

There's really nothing more important at the moment because we signed the five year community pharmacy agreement last year, which is also a huge priority for us. But that's better down now for another four years. So even at a national level, even the national guys are helping us with scope of practise issues around the states and territories, including Victoria. But certainly on my board I represent the Victorian pharmacists specifically at the moment. We've got a 12 member board.

Our branch committee members are fighting as hard as they can to get that over the line, speaking to as many politicians as they can, inviting him into our pharmacies to actually show 'em what we can do. I'm in a consulting room right now just showing him that we've got one two consulting rooms per pharmacy. So we've got all the infrastructure, we're telling them about the PSA courses, we are engaging the university to see if they want to come and do a course as

well. I've got three fantastic universities in Victoria, for example. They're all keen as master to put out a course as well to upskill our pharmacists in Victoria, but they're a little bit hesitant because they're waiting for the announcement. So that is by a mile the number one priority for us. But with the Guild, like always, we're 98 years old, the Pharmacy Guild, we're turning a hundred in two years. We basically do what our members tell us to do.

We had a member briefing this week in Geelong. We had a really big one last week that Jarrod came to with about a hundred. So we usually just ask them, what do you want us to do? What's your priorities? And it seems that the scope of practise is quite high on their list as well, and it was really, really refreshing to see, especially when Jarrod spoke and I had a small member briefing in Geelong this week, but I got the same feedback when I did the presentation.

People my age were actually getting excited. The young people were getting excited, it didn't matter. I was a little bit reluctant and nervous that sometimes 60 year olds or older guys and ladies that are still practising at our age, my age group might be a little bit nervous or too lazy or too, they just don't want to do the extra training. I think because their end of their career, that wasn't the case. Actual fact, some of the oldies like me have put their hand up and said,

you know what? This is something that I'd like to get involved because it just keeps me fresh. So we got really good feedback from the last two member briefings. We are doing a briefing in Bendigo this week, so my fingers crossed. I'm hoping they're going to be supportive of scope of practise as well, because of course if you haven't got your members on site, nothing's going to happen. For example, we were a bit worried about the price that the PSA had put out there, but there was no pushback.

It was really refreshing and quite positive the feedback. But that's what we do when we do member briefings. We ask our members for their advice, for their feedback. They seem to think that scope of practise should be our priority right now, but we certainly keep 'em up to date with things like obviously the federal election result that just came through a couple of weeks ago. So they're very interested about that, how that's going to play out.

We certainly have to keep the membership numbers high at the Pharmacy Guild. We're only as good as our members, so our membership is very, very high, but we're not complacent about our membership because that's really, really important with advocacy. When we go to decision makers, they need to know that we represent the majority of pharmacy owners. So that's always been a priority for us to keep our membership up as high as possible.

So there's always questions about our membership fees and what have you, which we're happy to answer. And so there's probably our top two or three priorities that we're looking at at the moment.

So when you get the opportunity to explain to them, explain to the consumer or the member of the public that pharmacists are very, very, very highly trained healthcare professionals and we've got quite a bit of capacity to do more, you never know who you're talking to. So I think you never miss the opportunity to say that when someone's forgotten their prescription or they're complaining to you that how come I can't get this? I know what I'm doing. I'm really health literate.

Why do I need to go to the doctor? Well, that's your opportunity to say that particular patient. Yes, we agree with you. Unfortunately, the regulations and legislation, the policies, whatever, don't agree with us at the moment, but we are working hard to change that. That'd be number one for me. And obviously I say that because that's what I've been doing all my life anyway, but I think every little bit helps. You never know.

It doesn't matter how experienced or inexperienced you are, sometimes that one extra conversation can always help. And certainly to get prepared, of course you've got to do the training. So be prepared to do the training. Don't cut back on any training. That's always going to be important.

We want well-trained pharmacists and have the infrastructure, like I just alluded to before, if you've got an opportunity to renovate your pharmacy or update your pharmacy, your boss, or if you are the owner of the pharmacy or if you're an employee, always advocate for that as well. Make sure that they don't just build a pharmacy or set up a pharmacy to be a retail outlet.

You can do as much retail as you feel comfortable with, but really in the future of pharmacies to make sure you have the right consulting rooms, right privacy areas to be able to do those extra bits and pieces that as you know worldwide, not just Australia wide, but slowly, the regulators and the decision makers are allowing us to do more. So you'll need to have the property infrastructure and the consulting rooms are obviously the first step for you.

but we're all good now with Mark as well. He knows where we stand. Certainly Anthony does to Mr. Albanese and so does Mr. Butler. They both know, but you never know, maybe the health industry might change after a few years because Mark Butler's got NDIS and Health. It's quite a huge portfolio that he's looking after. He's very, very confident that he wants to stay in health. He's told me that personally. He seems to like health, health Ministers don't usually last that long though.

I didn't tell him that, but historically, they don't last that long. It is quite a big portfolio and obviously the PM's given him NDIS as well, so we don't really care. We didn't really mind who won because we had forged a good relationship with both sides. Both sides knew exactly where we were going, what we needed, what we didn't like, et cetera. Didn't mean they were going to support us, but we made sure we did all the work with Dutton's team, but also with Albanese team.

So they're very clear what community pharmacy needs and requires and what our patients need. They certainly both backed us with the general copayment reduction. So we asked the general copayment to go from $31.60 to $19, but they met us halfway at 25, which is fantastic. That's going to start on the 1st of January. So we got bipartisan support on that, which is what we always try to do. We don't try to wedge one against the other. We'd rather than both agree on something.

So we were pretty successful on getting them both to agree on the $25 general copayment.

And there's various other things now that we're going to go and talk to the health Minister about, including things like continued dispensing, automatic safety net activation rather than all the paperwork that we do and making sure people don't miss out on safety net that should be automated rather than God knows how many people miss out on safety net when they don't follow their, if they don't say one pharmacy and they don't hit their stickers and all that rubbish they've got to do. So again,

Mark Butler's agreed to do that with a bit of luck. That'll probably cost them money because there's probably a lot of scripts that are going through at some sort of cost when they should be on free or concession card. But again, that's going to be good for our patients. They should be doing things like that.

So with cost of living crisis and what have you, they should be looking after those patients that are on huge amounts of medication and they may not be as tidy or as efficient as a patient that only comes to one pharmacy. We've got to look after all those other patients that may be travelling or moving around or there's a lot of patients that go to hospital and miss all those stickers and stuff and they don't realise how many they've had, then you can't get it out of the hospital.

That should all be streamlined with the commuter systems and the technology that we have these days. So again, they've said they're going to do it, watch this space. So we've got a few things we've got to do with Mark his team.

So the future of the young kids coming through should be better and better and we're basically just catching up with our overseas colleagues anyway. I mean degrees overseas have got all that stuff in the original degree, so all the unis are on board. So certainly with the young kids coming through,

it should be quite exciting. But with oldies like me as well, if you want to upskill, it's quite exciting to keep you refreshed in the pharmacy landscape and the pharmacy, the new, whether it's biologics in terms of medicines or more prescribing, it's quite an exciting area to be in.

And certainly the pharmacists that are practising now are finding things like I touched on safety net and some bureaucratic things that they find very, very hard to stay on top of. Staffing is always an issue. Human resources, industrial relations are always changing and that's certainly a very common question we get at the guild. Assistance around employment reductions in employment levels, whether it's pay rates, redundancy pays, wages above and below the required rates.

That's a lot of stuff for pharmacy owners to stay on top of and be spot on because obviously you don't want to get any of that stuff wrong because that again, eats up lots of your time as small business people. So certainly industrial relations, the wages, the staff issues, that's always number one in our pharmacy network, that's where the guild can help you. And then there's all the technology stuff that are changing all the time that pharmacists need to keep on top of.

And that's why I was pleasantly surprised that when we threw the scope of practise training Adam, there wasn't that much pushback. I'm thinking with all the other stuff you guys are doing, where are you going to find the time? But there you go. They will find the time hopefully.

Your stock control is very, very important this time of the year, whether it's ethicals in your dispensary or out the front, if you haven't got that nice and clean, all you're going to do is create a headache for your account and your bookkeeper. It's pretty easy as that. Unfortunately,

if you leave that to the last minute, you're in trouble. So yeah, ended financial year issues are really number one at the moment, not only in pharmacy but also for example, in our head office at the pharmacy hill, we're trying to tidy everything up, a lot of audits and what have you and regulatory things that we've got to be on top of. But certainly in pharmacy land, that's the sort of stuff that most pharmacists and staff members will be all

over at the moment. Getting rid of all the out dates or short dated things, making sure all the stock counts are right, making sure the computer system's got all the stock counts correct, which is doing a nice cleanup before we start the new financial year. And when we ask our staff to do that this time of the year, of course it's not a pleasant conversation, the busiest part of the year because we are just ramping up for winter as well.

There's lots of vaccines happening at the moment, so it is a very busy part of the year for pharmacy at the moment.

so I suppose popular. But again, the review that's hopefully coming out next week and the week after will show how those four disease states have been done in Victoria. Plus it will probably give us some indication of what the volume has been out there as well. But I know anecdotally that obviously the UTI service has been really good, and every time I dispense an oral contraceptive on a prescription, I always remind the lady that next time round you've actually got an option.

And every single time they are so happy just with the conversation. And I've already just dispensed it off the script and that I'm just letting you know that guess what, you've got no repeats left or you've got two repeats left. Guess what? It's up to you next time you can either just come back to me or I can just look at the doctor's name. Well, you can go and see this bloke. Well,

this lady that's all right. It's up to you. Oh, thank They're always absolutely so excited just by having that conversation.

And if obviously you're not a pharmacy owner and you're a pharmacist or anything to do with pharmacy, I think like Carlene and I have been speaking on this podcast, I think it's a great profession to be in, a great industry to be in and things looking up at the moment because a lot of interesting things that are happening in our profession, not just in Australia but worldwide as well, and certainly across our states in Australia. It's a great profession,

great industry to be in. And if you've been listening to this podcast, hopefully I've given you that impression.

a profession. Until next time, take care and keep making a difference in healthcare.