PHARMACIST and PATIENT DISCUSSION GUIDE – Summer 2010
July 9, 2010
Top Line Messages
- Funding cuts to frontline healthcare will affect pharmacy services you have come to rely on
- We are changing the way we serve you, our patients
Discussion points
- Did you know that the Ontario government has cut funding to pharmacies and the services we provide?
- There is a large funding gap between what it costs to provide pharmacy care and what the government pays pharmacies
- It costs me approximately $14 to dispense a medicine. This covers pharmacist and staff wages, rent, utilities, and everything else
- But the Ontario Drug Benefit plan sets my dispensing fee at only $7 – and they don’t pay pharmacies anything at all for the rest of the services I provide to patients
- So under the Ontario drug plan, I’m actually losing money every time I dispense a medicine
- These funding cuts have hit my pharmacy hard. The government has downloaded a significant portion of pharmacy funding, and as a result we’ve been forced to re-assess how we do business. (give examples)
- Pharmacy and pharmacists are asking the government to reinvest the cuts into expanded pharmacy services which help improve the health of Ontarians, and often help save expensive and needless emergency room visits
- Your help in telling the government and our MPP that maintaining a viable community pharmacy is important to you, and that you support the reinvestment of funds saved into expanded pharmacy services would be appreciated