Speaking to Carlene McMaugh for the AJP Podcast, Topp said that the senior staff who run the Health Department, “Quite frankly…do not understand this at all”.

“It’s pretty gobsmacking, isn’t it, that this can be dreamed up as a concept – obviously, a long time ago, without us being aware of it – and then landed in pharmacy’s lap with literally a few weeks to work out how they’re going to handle the impacts,” Topp tells McMaugh in this discussion on double dispensing.

This goes “right down to the granular level,” he said, questioning how patients will access methadone, how extra services will be managed with fewer staff, how aged care changes will take place and how pharmacies can build infrastructure without a sufficient income stream.

Topp calls the impact analysis used to support the measure “embarrassing” and “was written to retrofit the policies”.

“We know there will be pharmacies that do not survive this.”

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