announced in April<\/a> Seymour said from June this year pharmacists can treat things like head lice, scabies, and oral rehydration.<\/p>\nSeymour wanted this extended to chest infections, ear infections, skin infections and acute pain.<\/p>\n
He said if a pharmacist can treat the condition directly, the patient gets a good result, and it saves a number of appointments in another part of the system.<\/p>\n
He indicated some patients would still need a GP and some symptoms would still need urgent medical attention, but that was “exactly how triage works”.<\/p>\n
The second part of the party proposal was managing long-term medication.<\/p>\n
Seymour said for many people their main interaction with the health system was ongoing management for a condition. He said they might know their medication is working and “simply need it renewed”, or they need a blood test to check the dose is right.<\/p>\n
“But instead of a quick, practical interaction with a trained health professional, they are sent back into the GP queue.”<\/p>\n
He said ACT would allow pharmacists to manage that for appropriate patients, including ordering blood tests where needed, while GPs would retain the overall clinical visibility and responsibility.<\/p>\n
“Results would be integrated into the shared health record. Pharmacists would manage routine monitoring and identify when a patient needs to be referred back to their GP.”<\/p>\n
Not all patients would be suitable, but a large number of stable patients could have “routine medication reviews” managed more conveniently through their local pharmacy he said.<\/p>\n
The last proposal was to allow accredited pharmacies to provide skin lesion triage and monitoring.<\/p>\n
Under this proposal, the pharmacist would use a dermatoscope and an approved AI risk-assessment tool to assess a lesion, Seymour explained.<\/p>\n
He said it wouldn’t be a diagnosis, but a “triage” in which there would be two possible outcomes.<\/p>\n
“If the lesion is above the risk threshold, the patient would be referred to a GP or specialist,” he said. The dermoscopic image would be attached, meaning the next clinician receives useful information “rather than starting from scratch.”<\/p>\n
“If the lesion is below the risk threshold, the image would be securely stored, and the patient would be scheduled for longitudinal recall,” he said.<\/p>\n
They would then receive a reminder to come back and get another check.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters after the announcement, Seymour was asked if this would just transfer the pressure from GPs to pharmacies. He said pharmacies don’t have to take on the extra work but the experience currently was that people can see their pharmacist quicker for a vaccination then they can see their GP.<\/p>\n
Seymour said they hadn’t done “mathematical modelling” to give an absolute indication of how much sooner people might be able to see their GPs due to the policy, “but the things we know for sure is that it’s going to be more affordable, more efficient and faster than cramming everyone into a GP for minor ailments.<\/p>\n
“How big that benefit is? We can’t say right now, but we believe there is a benefit, and that’s a good reason to do it.”<\/p>\n
Asked about Labour’s policy to deliver three free GP visits for people, Seymour said it was a “soundbite policy for political reasons rather than an actual sensible approach to healthcare economics.”<\/p>\n
He said Labour’s policy would see more people seeing a GP when their problem could have been solved another way, but the party wasn’t providing the additional money or training additional doctors to serve it.<\/p>\n
Extra training needed<\/p>\n
Director of Mangawhai Pharmacy, Lanny Wong, told Checkpoint extra training would be needed to ensure pharmacists could safely treat all the conditions.<\/p>\n
“We are not going to be able to do this overnight, obviously this will be rolled out very slowly, if it does get rolled out.”<\/p>\n
Wong said some of the conditions ACT is proposing pharmacists treat, such as skin conditions, would require more credentials.<\/p>\n
She said pharmacists were already monitoring some aspects of long-term conditions, such as gout.<\/p>\n
“If someone has been diagnosed with gout, the doctor will prescribe a gout pack, and that prescription gets sent to a pharmacy and the pharmacist actually manages the titration of that medicine, and we monitor the blood tests that come back, and titrate the dose as it progresses.”<\/p>\n
Wong said pharmacists will need to work closely with GPs and nurses to ensure the changes are rolled out safely.<\/p>\n
“There are a lot of gaps in primary care, and pharmacy can step in in some ways.”<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Seymour and Simeon Brown announcing the scheme in April. Photo: RNZ \/ Nick Monro The ACT party…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[48,47,134,527,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-420513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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