Patient Care Efficiency

We can be a bunch of moaners in this country, can't we? Now, from my point of view, that announcement yesterday, which we talked about on the show, that the pharmacists may soon be able to hand out a range of publicly funded medicines without the patient having to go to the GP first is a no-brainer. It's wonderful because it's just low-level medications. It's PAMOL, maybe some eye drops for what seemed to me to be fairly common and uncomplicated illnesses like conjunctivitis or head lice. And the pharmacists, this is not anything new for the pharmacists. The pharmacists are already looking at the conjunctivitis. conjunctivitis and going oh yeah mate that's conjunctivitis you need the eye drops they're already dispensing the medications the only difference is now if this proposal goes through that they will hand out the medication at the same subsidized price that you would get if you'd gone to the GP first you're not going to have to buy it over the counter for the full price and the good news with that why this makes it a no-brainer is that it takes pressure off the GP or the ED that poor people will have to go see first if they wanted to get the medication for cheap or for free. free and then b also it saves time for patients having to go you know they don't have to go through all the faff of going to see a doctor first so who would moan about this let me tell you who would moan about this gen pro gen pro's moaned about it the gp advocacy group they are warning that this runs the this runs the risk of misdiagnosis because maybe a pharmacist may look at that conjunctivitis and go oh look it's a pussy eye here are some eye drops but not realize actually it's caused by an ear infection now please remember These are pharmacists who are already doing this diagnosis. The only difference is what you pay for the medication. So the misdiagnosis may already be happening. So why are they really moaning about this? Let me tell you why. Because GenPro knows this is going to take pressure off GPs. And that's going to undermine the thing they actually want, which is that they want their GPs to be under pressure so they can moan about their GPs being under pressure so they can get more money for the overworked doctors. Frankly, they should just be honest because they may well have a decent argument. argument to mount, and I suspect they do, but they're not going to convince many people with the strawman argument they just sound like a pack of moaners dumping on a really good idea.