JR Pharmacy

Welcome to the Pitcher Pharmacy Autumn 2018 newsletter, keeping you up to date with industry changes and tackling issues that we consider to be of high relevance to pharmacy owners. Inside this edition, Norman Thurecht analyses the challenges of competing in a mature industry. He considers the ongoing effect of shrinking generic margins on head offices and whether the benefits from scaling and consolidation actually exceed the costs at store level.

WELCOME to the second edition of our 2017 Pitcher Pharmacy newsletter; keeping you up-to-date with ongoing community pharmacy industry changes and their impact on owners, while offering insights on business performance and improvement opportunities. In positive news since our last update, the May Federal Budget confirmed ongoing support for the existence of Pharmacy Location Rules. More recently, wholesalers were granted an increase in government Community Service Obligation funding. Moreover, pharmacies now receive an increased Administration and Handling Incentive (AHI) fee to compensate for lower-than-projected Sixth Community Pharmacy Agreement (6CPA) script volumes, together with a remuneration improvement to the funding of dose administration aids (DAAs). Meanwhile, the Review of Pharmacy Remuneration and Regulation was completed. It provides a list of recommendations which, in our view, reflected the contribution of the various interest groups that participated, but largely avoided any mainstream media focus that previous reviews have generated.

WELCOME to the Pitcher Pharmacy Summer 2017 newsletter; keeping you up-to-date with industry changes and their impact on pharmacy owners. Along with the rest of the Industry, we welcome Greg Hunt as the new Health Minister and wish him well in the review and completion of the numerous health portfolio projects inherited from the outgoing Sussan Ley. While many view the change as positive (if only because an incoming minister is relatively free to reshape previous policy directions) we note that the current King review will provide independent recommendations in its yet-to-be completed report.

As you will be aware, the coalition has been returned to Government by the slimmest of majorities but without control of the Senate. This is potentially a good outcome for Pharmacy businesses and customers as it arguably reduces the risk of any negative policy changes given the likely ongoing need for minor party support (eg. Nick Xenophon who is a strong supporter of Pharmacists). Also it is possible that ministerial shuffling will occur which could translate to a change from the current Health Minister Sussan Ley.

Welcome to Pitcher Pharmacy’s summer edition newsletter. A new Community Pharmacy Agreement combined more recently with a change in Prime Minister has provided a significant boost to Pharmacy’s economic outlook.

After much negotiation, the new Guild Government Agreement has now been signed with key announced features including a significant increase in services funding, replacement of mark-ups with fixed handling fees, reduction in application of the premium free incentive, ability to discount the co-payment and a review of location rules to occur within the first two years of the Agreement. On balance and despite the expected negative impact from the copayment discounting option, we consider the Agreement to be a positive outcome for Pharmacy owners, employees, patients and financiers. In many ways however nothing has changed, i.e. the main challenge for all Pharmacy businesses remains is how to increase relevance to customers with the ultimate proof being growth in customer numbers and average retail sale per customer. In his column Norman focuses on the financial analysis of the Agreement changes and how to address the reality of ongoing reductions in gross profit per script by enhancing the Pharmacy’s relevance to customers.

Recently we requested clients provide us with various dispensary reports so we could analyse the impact of the October 1 medicine price cuts. In a sign of the level of concern that exists within the industry the response was significant. In this edition Norman reports on his analysis of the data and discusses the positive steps Pharmacy owners need to be taking to ensure businesses remain successful well into the future.