The Chamber of Physicians described the President of the Chamber of Pharmacists as having public service on-call services “not a viable and viable solution”. Instead, she advocates more medical pharmacies.
When it called for the pharmacies’ on-call service to be financed by the public sector, in the same way as the emergency medical service, the Chamber of Physicians sharply criticized Ulrike Mursch-Edlmayr, President of the Chamber of Pharmacists. “If pharmacies do not manage to operate successfully, then they shouldn’t make the public responsible,” says Silvester Hutgrabner, head of the department for agricultural medicine and home pharmacies. “Constantly founding new public pharmacies, not generating sufficient sales and passing the financial risk on to the health budget is definitely not a viable and viable solution.”
Instead, he advocates more medical home pharmacies in rural areas. General practitioners could provide their patients with medication directly there – without night or holiday surcharges. Hutgrabner: “Pharmacies are very relevant to care, especially during off-peak times, and should therefore be strengthened.”
“In fact, it’s the other way around”
Vice-President of the Medical Association, Johannes Steinhart Mursch-Edlmayr, describes the statement that the medical medicine chest is the “worst and least sustainable solution” and not that, “in an almost absurd way, motivated by the self-interest of the Chamber of Pharmacists and clearly directed against rural health care” Endanger the existence of public pharmacies.
“In fact, it is exactly the opposite,” says Steinhart. “The establishment of new public pharmacies in rural regions has led to the closure of 62 medical pharmacies in Austria over the past ten years, while 155 new public pharmacies have been opened. The population has to bear the negative consequences of this development. ”The many new start-ups in public pharmacies meant that locations with low sales potential had also been chosen, which would sooner or later put pharmacies in distress.
“Brittle economic foundation”
“By then, however, they had already replaced existing home pharmacies due to the territorial protection regulations of the pharmacy law, which was completely outdated in this point,” says Steinhart. “If the Chamber of Pharmacists now claims that a medical pharmacy in each community would lead to the closure of more than 600 public pharmacies, it shows how fragile the economic foundation of many pharmacies is already.”
The Chamber of Physicians has long been calling for the liberalization of the Pharmacy Act of 2006 – specifically the elimination of the clause that general practitioners have to close their pharmacy if a public pharmacy opens within four kilometers of the street. The Chamber of Pharmacists is strictly against it.
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