Bargain Chemist in Wellington’s Lyall Bay is unable to fulfill prescriptions for funded medications, after Health NZ decided not to grant its application.<\/p>\n
The business put up a sign in recent weeks alerting customers to the situation, and offering a free courier option for medication dispensed from its Manners Street store instead.<\/p>\n
In response to RNZ’s questions, Bargain Chemist director Peter Shenoda confirmed their application for a licence (an integrated community pharmacy services agreement, or ICPSA) had not been approved.<\/p>\n
In a statement, he said: “Health NZ ultimately determined that it did not consider there was sufficient evidence of need for an additional funded pharmacy service in the area. We respectfully disagree.”<\/p>\n
The Bargain Chemist store is in the Wellington Airport Retail Park. There are two other pharmacies nearby – a Chemist Warehouse and a Unichem Pharmacy on Bay Road in Kilbirnie, a five-minute drive (or 20-minute walk) away.<\/p>\n
Shenoda said they were appealing the decision, as the bigger issue was patient choice.<\/p>\n
“We welcome competition. What we don’t understand is why having an existing pharmacy nearby should mean patients cannot have another choice when there is clear community demand for it.”<\/p>\n
Bargain Chemist is New Zealand-owned and operated, with 30 stores across the country. It fulfills prescriptions for funded medication for free, where other stores might charge a small prescription fee, with $5 as the standard co-payment.<\/p>\n
“We’ve heard particularly from elderly customers, parents and people with mobility and transport challenges who value the accessibility, parking, opening hours and convenience of the Lyall Bay pharmacy.”<\/p>\n
It could be a lengthy process to obtain a licence, Shenoda said. Their Upper Hutt store applied for one in 2022, and it was only granted in July this year.<\/p>\n
Shenoda asked the health agency to hear its community.<\/p>\n
“Our request to Health NZ is straightforward: reconsider the Lyall Bay decision, listen to what the community is telling you, and allow local patients the choice of accessing funded prescription services from Bargain Chemist.”<\/p>\n
Health NZ group manager for funding and integration north Deborah Davies said Health NZ had “wide commissioning powers” and was not required to accept all applications.<\/p>\n
Each case was considered in terms of access to pharmacy services, unmet need, equity, service duplication, and the effective and efficient use of the pharmacy workforce.<\/p>\n
“Decisions are made on the merits of each application and are not based on whether a pharmacy is New Zealand- or foreign-owned.”<\/p>\n
Bargain Chemist had told Health NZ it was appealing that decision in December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bargain Chemist in Wellington’s Lyall Bay is unable to fulfill prescriptions for funded medications, after Health NZ decided…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[163,85,46,482],"class_list":["post-586189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-medication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}