Is Doctors’ Dispensing better than Pharmacist Dispensing in serving the peoples’ total healthcare in Malaysia ?

25/2/2015

In this article, I as a humble small town General Practitioner, will attempt to provide credible grounds as to why doctors should preserve the prescription and dispensing duties in Malaysia, and also why Dispensing Separation is not without many pitfalls. I am going to divide our discussions into 5 major topics:

1.    Where do we stand now in ranking of national primary healthcares?

2.    Does DS save costs of total national healthcares in Malaysia?

3.    What are the other controversies around Dispensing Separation?

4.    Doctors in Malaysia are not alone is questioning Dispensing Separation. UK and US studies

5.    What we think is best for the healthcare of the country.

6.    The consumer groups that are against DS.

 What is happening now?
Dispensing by pharmacist is akin to the depiction here, where the horse is the doctor.

The Malaysian Pharmaceutical Society have been pushing hard for the dispensing of medications to be handled solely by the Pharmacists with the tacit approval of the authorities. Things have come to the fore lately over likelihood of Pharmacy Bill which  being tabled in the Parliament in April 2015; however this was recently denied by the MOH and MMC.

Dispensing Separation  has been hotly debated by both divides of the healthcare profession, ie. the doctors versus the pharmacists. More than 95% of the Pharmacist support it; while most of the doctors are against.  This article is about doctors’ point of view : why are we against it so vehemently.

The public may think that doctors are trying to protect their rice bowl; rightly so because in this critical issue is a matter of doctors survival, not commercial monopoly. However, beyond that point, there are more to the major issue than meet the eyes regarding the critical welfare in the health of the consumers. At the heart of the issue, is whether the citizens of the country will benefit from the system, or will it cause irreversible hardships for decades to come ! Is DS better that Doctors’ dispensing ?

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