The Shepherd’s Care Foundation (SCF) has a lot of work to do if they are going to convince the residents and their families that changing to an Edmonton-based pharmacy is a good idea.
On Monday, April 4, Tom Smith of SCF, as well as representatives from Pharmacare Pharmacy, were on hand, at Shepherd’s Care’s Barrhead facility, to listen to concerns and answer questions about SCF’s decision to make the Edmonton-based business their pharmacy of choice for all their supportive-living facilities.
The meeting was the second information session for residents and their families and will be the last large group one. In the coming weeks SCF will hold individual meetings with residents, their families and caregivers.
A family member of a resident, who didn’t give her name, said while she understood SCF’s desire to have one pharmacy provider, thus reducing the chance of drug error, she asked why they decided against going with a local pharmacy.
“We have 1,600 residents in Shepherd’s Care. At Kennsington Village, our largest facility in Edmoton, there are 800 residents. For those residences we had three different pharmacies. We are compressing that down to one,” Smith said. “This is not a capricious decision by Shepherd’s Care. The business and care experts as well as the regulatory environment are strongly pushing us towards a single source. It reduces complexity.”
Smith added the decision had nothing to do with the competency of the local pharmacies.
“We would love to keep them, but we can’t. In Barrhead there are five pharmacies. All have highly-qualified pharmacists, but they serve 40 some residents. That increases complexity. It’s not about the pharmacists. They do their job beautifully, but we have human systems in place that can fail if there is complexity,” he said.
Charles Sutherland said when his mother moved into Shepherd’s Care four years ago they signed a contract with SCF.
“In it, it says I have the right to choose to receive the care I need. It is my right to make choices regarding my care,” he said, adding if they had known about SCF’s plans at the time his mother moved in, they might have made another choice.
“Now you are wanting to change the rules halfway through the game and I’m a little upset about that.”
Simon Elgersma asked what was so complex about having a local pharmacist deal with his mother’s medication needs.
He said on a regular basis, he and his mother meet with the pharmacist to adjust her medications.
“The local pharmacist comes down and has sat with us face-to-face, person-to-person, and goes over her medication, if there are any complications,” Elgersma said, adding often the pharmacist often follows up with a phone call a week later. “They provide excellent service here. What is so complicated about that?”
Elgersma also questioned Pharmacare Pharmacy’s claim that in the majority of cases, residents wouldn’t notice a change in billing. Earlier in the presentation, Sharon Maclean, Pharmacare Pharmacy’s community relations manager, said in the majority of cases, residents’ medication bills would be about the same and possibly a little lower due to the company’s buying capacity.
Elgersma’s mother’s medication bill is about $3,000 yearly, but because her pharmacy is at the Co-op, she receives an annual dividend cheque of between five and 10 per cent.
“So right off the bat, it’s going to cost mother between $250 to $350 extra?” he said. “Are you going to give us that back?”
Smith responded that SCF is a non-profit organization. It isn’t a cooperative so Pharmacare Pharmacy customers wouldn’t get a rebate.
Another resident then said by outsourcing Shepherd’s Care’s pharmacy needs to a business that wasn’t local, they were taking money and jobs out of the community.
“I’m not sure that a pharmacist dispensing medications for two or five people at Shepherd’s Care Barrhead is the difference of economic viability and keeping their pharmacy open,” Smith replied.
Rita Lyster, a pharmacist at Rita’s Apothecary &Home Healthcare Ltd., disagreed, adding if a local pharmacy was chosen to be the pharmacy of choice for a facility it could very well mean the difference of being able to hire another pharmacist.
Lyster said she agreed that there should only be one pharmacy, because it does help reduce the chances of human error, but asked why they did not put out a request for proposal locally.
“Barrhead’s pharmacies are more than capable of providing the same service Pharmacare is going to provide. Why weren’t we included in a RFP (Request For Proposal)?” she said, adding she was given assurances by SCF that local pharmacies would be allowed to bid.
Smith responded by saying because SCF was looking for one provider to service all its facilities, including the ones in Edmonton, Barrhead pharmacies were not asked.
A number of people asked if they would be forced to change pharmacies even if they didn’t want to.
“This isn’t a dictatorship. Everyone is talking like this is a fait accompli,” Smith said “At the end of this process, after the one-on-one consultations with the residents and their families, those who still want to stay with their pharmacy, that is their choice. It is our hope that after we have had enough conversation and discussion, residents would see our reasoning behind it.”
