Pharmacists protest upcoming fee changes

By Gillian Slade on April 20, 2018.

gslade@medicinehatnews.com  @MHNGillianSlade

A protest took place in Medicine Hat on Thursday over cuts to fees Alberta pharmacists can bill the government for.

Pharmacists of Alberta Unite, with about 20 supporters, want the Minister of Health Sarah Hoffman to reconsider the changes due to come into effect May 17.

“I think anybody can relate … It feels like we are being reprimanded for relieving the strain off the health-care system,” said Heber Castillo, pharmacist and spokesperson at the event.

Pharmacists took on administering flu vaccine and are now doing more than half of those in the province, he said. The compensation for the service will drop from $20 per shot to $13.

“They just were talking numbers, they didn’t care about patient care necessarily,” said Castillo.

Considering the cost of health-care services, pharmacists are good value, he said.

From May 17, Alberta Health will pay $100 rather than $125 to pharmacists with prescribing authority to do a comprehensive annual care plan for a patient. Follow-ups to the care plan will be $20, and only $12 will be covered per year, per patient.

Providing a patient with a medication management assessment will qualify for $60 rather than $75, which those with prescribing authority can currently claim.

Those types of reviews have benefits for the patients, including about a 75 per cent success rate, in his own practice, helping people quit smoking, said Castillo. Medication reviews help the pharmacist gain a really good understanding of the patient’s health. This makes it feasible for consultations to be handled by pharmacists instead of patients always seeing a physician.

“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if it’s a hospital, health-care system (or pharmacist), there’s always dollars attached,” said Castillo.

It is not only the cuts to fees but also not being involved in the decision making process that is concerning, said Castillo.

When the new fee schedule was announced by Hoffman at the end of February, it came as a shock to pharmacists.

The government had been working with the Pharmacists’ Association.

“We’ve been under a non-disclosure agreement with government so we’ve not been able to inform them (pharmacists),” Margaret Wing, CEO Alberta Pharmacists’ Association, said that day.

Without the new agreement, pharmacy compensation was expected to increase by 12.3 per cent in the next two years. The new schedule reduces growth to 4.3 per cent over two years to accommodate population and volume growth.

Alberta is in line with fees in other provinces for pharmacist services, according to information supplied by Hoffman’s office.

The prescription dispensing fee in Alberta will go from $12.30 to $12.15. In British Columbia the basic fee is $10 with an additional rural subsidy of between $3 to $10.50. In Saskatchewan it is $11.40, Manitoba $30 and in Ontario $8.83 in urban areas, with between $9.93 and $13.25 for rural.

A medication review for $100 in Alberta. It is about $70 in B.C., $60 in Saskatchewan and $60 in Ontario. The fee for a pharmacist to do flu shot in B.C. is $10, in Saskatchewan $13 and Ontario $7.50.

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