Page 25 - Pharmacy History 37 Nov 2009

From the PBS files Geoff Miller
Test prescriptions
Since the time when the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) was introduced into Australia the Health Department, or the Health Insurance Commission, as it is known today, has always kept a measure of control over pharmacists and doctors. The difference in attitude towards
the two professions was expressed extensively in the book of rules in terms such as pharmacists ‘shall’ and doctors are ‘asked to’, or ‘may’.
One measure of control used against pharmacists was the ‘test prescription’.
This soon proved to be a farcical waste of time and expense which fell into disfavour when extemporaneous dispensing was no longer a significant source of dispensing income.
Test prescriptions were usually for a mixture or a cream which was analysed to ensure that the chemist hadn’t
short changed the Commonwealth and used the correct ingredients.
Test scripts soon became rather obvious as the prescriber was usually a Commonwealth employee doctor and often pharmacists would ring around their area to warn other colleagues.
It must have seemed like a Dick Tracy comic story as an anonymous person would present the prescription and the departmental inspector would call to collect it a day or two later. The inspector then divided the sample into two containers and sealed each with string and sealing wax and marked them A and B. The inspector took
the A sample and left the B sample with the pharmacist, and unless some crucial error had been made, that was usually the end of the story.
One example that left the Health Department officers with red faces
was a prescription for 100 tablets of calcium gluconate. The only brand available was made by a local company Knoll Australia, and the sample
supplied by the pharmacist failed the official disintegration test which earned a letter of reprimand for the pharmacist.
Carlton’s blues
In 1982 when Jim Matthews became National President of the Pharmacy Guild, the Commonwealth Health Minister at the time was Jim Carlton.
and remunerate chemists solely on the basis of a flat fee. Such a measure was not well received by pharmacists, but worse was yet to come.
The Government must have received some legal advice regarding the patient’s entitlement to receiving a pharmaceutical benefit, particularly those supplied to holders of a Pensioner Benefit Card.
Apparently simply signing the prescription form was not sufficient, as a more legally binding statement was required.
As it was impossible to reprint every prescription form on issue to the nation’s approved doctors which would comply with the proper declaration, the solution was to post to every approved pharmacist in Australia a huge wooden stamp (110 mm x 65 mm), which contained the required wording and had to be imprinted on the back of every prescription form.
If the pharmacist did not obtain
the Pension Number and receipt
from the patient or agent, then the Commonwealth would not pay for the benefit.
No stamp pad was supplied and every use of the stamp was humiliating for the pharmacist and staff.
Most of the stamps were used as kindling wood and they soon fell into ‘defiant disuse’.
Contact the editor if you would like a copy of the imprint!
(Thanks to Rhys Davies of Queensland for preserving the memory of one of our dark days.)
volume 5 no 37 NOVEMBER 2009
Pharmacy History Australia 25
Jim Carlton
Who can remember
‘the stamp’?
This is one of the many impositions inflicted upon community pharmacy by the Minister.
According to Stephen Greenwood in his History of the Pharmacy
Guild of Australia, ‘ready prepared’ Carlton was looking carefully at chemist’s remuneration with a view to eliminating the mark-up element