Kingston-area pharmacist advocating for simplified vaccine policy

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A Kingston-area pharmacist is pointing out the unnecessarily complicated process that faces older adults who want to update various vaccinations.

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Jen Belcher is vice-president of the Ontario Pharmacists Association, a role she fills from the Lennox and Addington County General Hospital in Napanee. She’s advocating for a change in policy when it comes to prescribing and administering a host of vaccines that some older adults would like to have, including viruses to help prevent shingles, RSV and pneumococcal virus, which require the prescription of a doctor.

In a news release sent on behalf of the organization, it was pointed out that Ontario has the most outdated policy in Canada when it comes to some vaccines for seniors, pointing out that many do not have access to a family doctor, and that some vaccines are not covered by public funding or even private health care if they are not prescribed by a doctor.

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Some vaccines are non-prescription, and therefore can be recommended and administered by pharmacists.

Some vaccines are covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) for some individuals of certain ages, and not others, and some insurance companies won’t cover some vaccines, even non-prescription ones, unless they get a prescription from their doctor, which adds to the administrative burden of family doctors.

The issue is convoluted and complicated, Belcher admits.

“It just depends on which product it is, and it gets very confusing, very quickly,” she said.

Belcher and other pharmacists in the province want to see Ontario update its legislation to allow pharmacists to prescribe vaccinations when needed.

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“About 75 per cent of Ontarians are coming to pharmacies for their flu and COVID-19 shots, and we’re able to administer a bunch of other vaccines, just not prescribe them,” she said. “If pharmacists could prescribe, that takes away any need to go back and forth to other health-care providers, just to be assessed to get a prescription, when pharmacists have the skills, training and education to do that already.”

At the very least, Belcher said, pharmacists would like to see more consistency across private drug plans to recognize that pharmacist-recommended, over-the-counter vaccines should be eligible under drug plans.

“If the pharmacist recommends it or the doctors prescribe it, we’d like to see them pay for it, regardless of how it’s recommended to that person.”

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As of January 2023, Ontario pharmacists can prescribe drugs for 13 different common ailments, including things like hay fever, oral thrush, pink eye, urinary tract infections and others, as well as prophylaxis antibiotics to prevent Lyme disease following a tick bite.

According to the Canadian Pharmacists Association, pharmacists in nine Canadian provinces and territories have the authorization to prescribe vaccines, if they’ve undergone further training or meet regulatory requirements, which vary by jurisdiction. Those opportunities are not extended to pharmacists in Ontario, British Columbia, Northwest Territories or Nunavut.

Belcher would like to see Ontario catch up with much of the rest of the country in utilizing industry knowledge and training to determine who could receive a vaccination that requires a prescription.

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“These are vaccines that we could give to somebody without a prescription if we determine it’s safe and appropriate,” she said.

She is not concerned about ethical considerations in the prescription of compounds that are provided to the public in the pharmacological sector.

“As a regulated health profession, we have an ethical duty to put the patient’s best interest at the centre of everything we do,” she said. “So we need to determine that it’s in the best interest of the individual to be vaccinated. And, in those instances where we’re making that recommendation, that person could take the recommendation and go elsewhere to be reassessed.”

With minor ailments prescriptions, Belcher pointed out, pharmacists are legally required to give the prescription and release the patient to take that prescription to any pharmacy to be filled.

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At the end of the day, Belcher hopes that the process of getting vaccines to people who want or need them can be streamlined, not only to help patients but also to help health-care professionals.

“It’s so complicated and so technical that a lot of even health-care providers have a hard time navigating what to tell people to do, and not enough people are fully vaccinated,” she said.

“I think there’s been a lot of recognition about what more pharmacists can do to take care of our community and alleviate some of those pressures on the system. At the same time, we need to do more to move the needle on immunization, because we could make an immediate and compelling impact into those vaccination rates with a more simplified, streamlined system.

“This has been on our request list from the (Ontario Pharmacists Association) to our government for quite some time. We’re optimistic that we may see some movement.”

mbalogh@postmedia.com

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