New business model needed
Matthews conceded that all pharmacies will have to come up with a new business model to meet this new reality, but added that the changes signal “a shift from a system that benefit pharmacy businesses to one that benefits patients” by allowing the government to use the expected more than $700 million in drug plan savings to add more drugs to the provincial drug plan.
Despite having presented the government with its own proposal for how pharmacy could help achieve significant drug plan savings, and having joined the Ministry in multiple discussions since August 2009, talks were cut off months ago and up to five planned pharmacy/drug program meetings had been cancelled by the government in recent weeks.
Details a surprise
As a result of this communications blackout, pharmacy groups heard about the reforms at the same time as the media and Ontario public.
“We are still digesting this,” one pharmacy association executive said, shortly after the announcement. Ontario’s Community Pharmacies, the coalition of chain and independent owners and pharmacists held a tele-forum briefing discussion for Ontario pharmacists Wednesday evening.
Shoppers Drug Mart issued a response to the announcement decrying the reforms but insisting that the company would revisit its priorities and strategies and review its forecasts for prescription sales growth.
In the statement, Shoppers president and chief executive officer Jurgen Schreiber said “These announced changes reinforce our view that in the long term, the successful players in retail pharmacy will be those with size, scale and an ability to leverage operating efficiencies.”
Independent owners, lacking that scale and size, are immediately less optimistic: “I fear for my patients right now,” said Donnie Edwards, an independent pharmacist and co-owner of Boggio-Edwards Pharmacy in Ridgeway, Ontario. “Will I be able to stay open late at night, and on weekends?
“Will I be able to afford to take the time needed to sit down with patients who have complex addiction issues?”
Rita Winn, an Oshawa-area pharmacist and COO of Lovell Drugs, a small Eastern-Ontario chain, said she is also fearful for her business and her future ability to provide the complex patient services she is now providing, including home infusion therapy and one-on-one medication management consults with mental health patients who find it difficult to adhere to complex medicine regimes.
Response from groups representing unions, employer drug plans, the insurance industry and seniors is initially enthusiastic about the reforms, which for the first time, allow private drug plans to benefit from savings legislated by government.
To comment on this story, contact us.