Pharmacy Services at Risk
Understanding What Happened.
Recent events threatened access to pharmacy services. Fortunately, the government has reversed its position and agreed to work with AQPP in seeking solutions through a concerted effort. March’s crisis stemmed from a misunderstanding of how pharmacists are compensated. Stay informed to help protect pharmacy services.
What Happened?
On March 26th, the government intervened by adopting an amendment that allowed the capping of pharmacists’ professional fees billed to private insurers. This decision quickly raised serious concerns among owner-pharmacists. It would reduce the predictability needed to manage their pharmacies and would threaten the ability of pharmacy teams to develop and maintain services offered to the public.
In response to mobilization by the AQPP and pharmacy teams, the Minister of Labour, Jean Boulet, course corrected. With us, the government agreed to create a tripartite committee composed of the government, insurers, and the AQPP to discuss fees associated with specialty medications. This agreement avoided immediate impacts on public services while opening the door to longer-term solutions.
Why Did This Situation Occur?
To understand the issue, it’s important to know that the fees billed to patients covered by the public plan no longer reflect actual costs. In fact, these fees have not increased in line with inflation for over 20 years, even though pharmacy practice and medications themselves have become much more complex. In addition to absorbing a growing workload, pharmacies face increasing expenses such as wages, rent, technology, and patient follow-up.
For privately insured patients, fees reflect the business reality of running a pharmacy and the expenses required to keep it accessible to all.
Over the past few years, research has led to new drug treatments that better address complex or rare diseases. However, these more sophisticated treatments are expensive (some medications can cost millions of dollars for a single patient). Pharmacists who acquire these drugs for their patients must assume costs related to potential losses, cold-chain management, and the salaries of pharmacy staff who support patients throughout treatment. Follow-up itself is very complex and requires more time to ensure treatment safety. Yet compensation for these services under the public plan has not kept pace with rising costs. Over time, the gap between fees covered by the public plan and those under private plans has continued to widen.
Seeking Solutions
This crisis concerned many pharmacy workers and patients. However, it also helped raise awareness about the challenges being faced by community pharmacies. The situation mobilized key stakeholders to work together, with the goal of finding a solution. Pharmacists have been asking for measures to address the growing impact of specialty medications for several years.
Insurers and workers have made similar requests. The AQPP sees this collaboration positively and is open to finding solutions.
What happens next is crucial: discussions between insurers, the government, and the AQPP must lead to the conditions required to preserve accessibility and pharmacy services.
Pharmacists want to be part of the solution, but they need a stable framework to continue serving the public effectively.