Health – NZ leads the way

As a self-confessed pharmacy nerd, I was very excited to attend a pharmacy conference in Australia recently. The conference covered everything pharmacy, and what I concluded came as a shock.

In provision of services to our communities, it turns out that New Zealand Community Pharmacy is well ahead of Australian pharmacies.

New Zealand led the pharmacy based vaccination race with 22 pharmacists becoming vaccinators in 2011. Australia followed in 2014. By 2017, pharmacies in New Zealand were providing free government funded flu vaccinations to eligible patients. Australia began offering funded flu vaccinations in certain states in 2022. Today pharmacists in both countries deliver a host of funded vaccinations, helping to protect our communities against harmful diseases 

South Australia just launched a service where patients with a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) who are women aged between 18 to 65 years old, meeting certain criteria can be prescribed an antibiotic for that infection by a qualified pharmacist. Across the ditch in New Zealand, we have been offering the UTI service since 2012!

In 2019, Unichem Manly Pharmacy and Manly Medical Centre fortuitously worked with an IT company on a basic solution to getting a prescription from a doctor to the pharmacy without the need of printing the prescription. Little did we realise that Covid-19 was just around the corner and in April 2020, the barely ready project went live to over 700 pharmacies all over New Zealand to help a healthcare system in dire need. Australian pharmacies only receive on average 20 percent of their prescriptions electronically compared with around 95 percent that we get here on the Coast. I think it is a great service for patients and I am sure Australia will follow us on this eventually. 

With GP’s workloads at an all-time high, it has become incumbent upon pharmacists to help out where we can. Helping the GPs with their workloads frees up their appointments for more complex or acutely sick patients. Newly available services in some pharmacies mean that specially qualified pharmacists can now prescribe antibiotics for strep throat, eye drops for conjunctivitis in as young as three-month-old children, anti-viral medication for shingles and antibiotics for rosacea (within certain criteria). Australia does not have these services yet, but are working toward them.

There are still areas where Australian pharmacy leads the way. IT systems and robotics, for example, appear more advanced. An electronic locker where medication is stored for pick up by the customer outside of the pharmacy hours helps provide better access to patients. The all-encompassing robot units that are a dispensary team all by themselves allow pharmacists to have more time to speak with their patients. 

Overall however, I am proud to say that the quintessentially Kiwi innovation gene is providing well for New Zealand community pharmacy patients.