Morwell, Victoria pharmacy owner Sam Armstrong talks to AJP Podcast host Carlene McMaugh about how changes to opioid dependence therapy went into action on 1 July – starting with how the software his two pharmacies use had a “database error” and wasn’t operational.

“To their credit, they fixed it quickly,” Armstrong says, but the episode highlights just how “rushed” the implementation of ODT changes have been.

“We’re still coming up, finding scenarios where we just haven’t been told how to work, or how to process or proceed,” he says, saying that overall, “the rollout’s been pretty poor”.

He says that “we still don’t know everything” about issues such as how to claim payment, and outlines some experiences other pharmacists have told him about – and how challenging they have been for both pharmacists and patients.

Armstrong also places the ODT changes in the context of wider sector challenges like 60-day dispensing – and the lack of confidence pharmacists now have in the federal Department of Health and Ageing.

“A lot of us are feeling very hurt in the way that we were there during Covid, stayed open, worked through…and then to have this done to us,” he says.

The rushed implementation of the ODT program, with potential harms for patients as some pharmacies stop a program which he calls very rewarding, is just another nail in pharmacy’s coffin, Armstrong tells McMaugh.

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