I read your article with
interest and I confess that I am not a middle-aged pharmacist that runs the
Pharmacy Guild for self employment, but own up to being a grandfather who with
my wife Rhonda founded the Terry White Chemists Group which is a franchised
pharmacy operation with over a hundred pharmacies throughout Australia. They are
all independently owned by individuals or partnerships of pharmacists.

What we have achieved
– and are working harder at getting better at – is giving our customers the best
service and deal that we can by group buying (and other savings) so that we can
take costs out of our business, thus offering a long term alternative to the
current Coles/Myer Woolworths duopoly. No disrespect to these two fine companies
but they already have 80% of the supermarket business. And do you really want to
give them 90% by throwing pharmacy into the product mix? These guys are not
angels when it comes to pricing and recent manipulation of liquor prices comes
to mind – even Coles owned up and paid $4.75 million!

I know you’re a
doubting Thomas about gastric bleeding from products like Ibuprofen but if you
care to check the US experience you’ll find that one of the most
popular over-the-counter products is Tagamet (for stomach bleeds, etc), as a
consequence of the widespread misuse and abuse of products like Ibuprofen.

Also many pharmacies used to stock tobacco products when I was a young
pharmacist and when it became widely known that tobacco products were injurious
to public health, organisations such as the Pharmacy Guild of Australia took a
policy stance not to stock these products.

You put forward a
simplistic view that if Coles and Woolworths employed registered pharmacists
that the quality of professional service to the community would be similar to
the current situation. Having worked extensively in deregulated markets overseas,
the only way you can get a pharmacist out of the dispensary is to throw a hand
grenade in – Woolworths will make all the promises in the world and sure, you
might even get a young enthusiastic pharmacist in the short term, but at the end
of the day their professionalism will inevitably be comprised by corporate
objectives at the expense of the health care of our
communities.

Finally, I would recommend you read PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ latest
“Retail and Consumer Outlook” on the future of pharmacy which paints a
pretty dismal economic picture for the average pharmacy turning over
about $2 million, dispensing 70% of their volume through the PBS scheme
– projected future gross profit margins being 24-26%. I estimate this
to represent a third of the current outlets in Australia, which has
already had an attrition rate from 6,000 to 5,000.

Sure it’s a growth
market, sure there are opportunities for pharmacists to do a better job and many
of us in the industry are working hard to achieve better outcomes by doing it
ourselves and not the corporates. Pharmacists are not our most protected
species – 1,500 of them are endangered.