A Launceston general practice has boycotted Chemist Warehouse over claims the franchise has been marketing external corporate telehealth services to its patients.
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Summerdale Medical Centre says the franchise has been actively marketing its own partnered national telehealth services by distributing flyers with prescriptions made by Launceston general practitioners
Practice partner Dr Don Rose said the behaviour undermined the work of community GPs and risked patients care, with national services unable to offer face to face consultations.
"It's a poor quality of medicine," he said.
"It's got GPs across the country angry, because it's been huge effort during the pandemic to keep working, to stay open and to offer face to face care.
"Telehealth has been an incredibly useful thing to come on board. But unfortunately it's like all new things and it is always going to be open to abuse.
"We have a good relationship with most pharmacies, but when they started advertising competitors and saying 'interstate doctors can do as well as your local GP', we all saw it as a kick in the pants."
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Additional government-subsidised Medicare Benefits Schedule items expanding patient access to telehealth and telephone services were introduced in March in response to COVID-19.
These existing arrangements are due to expire in September.
Where patients would have previously needed three consultations with a GP to be eligible for a telehealth appointment, now they don't need to have had any.
However, in May the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners warned of a growing number of corporate "pop-up" telehealth models offering services to patients in place of regular consultations with their GP.
RACGP president Dr Harry Nespolon said corporate services were taking advantage of understandable anxieties in the community
"If a patient is provided care outside of their usual general practice by a doctor who has no prior knowledge of their medical history you compromise continuity of care and that is a massive problem," he said
Dr Rose said his practice had decided to take a stand and would no longer provide faxing, posting or delivery of prescriptions to Chemist Warehouse.
The centre will still offer prescriptions, but they will need to be collected from the surgery or from other pharmacies in the region.
"Our fight is not with the local pharmacies, because obviously we need to work with them and we do," Dr Rose said.
"But Chemist Warehouse is not in the pharmacy guild [of Australia], so they don't follow the same rules a lot of other chemists follow.
"When you have a national body that tries to operate differently, we have a problem.
"This idea of persuading patients to drop their local GP and go to a national telehealth model - it's not acceptable."
Chemist Warehouse was contacted for comment.
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Jessica Willard
Being a health reporter to me is about more than just reporting the problems. It's about asking why they are happening in the first place and what needs to change to fix it.
Being a health reporter to me is about more than just reporting the problems. It's about asking why they are happening in the first place and what needs to change to fix it.
