Arizona Academy of Family Physicians

Laura Hahn, the director of the Arizona Academy of Family Physicians is spearheading the argument against the Arizona Pharmacy Alliance's attempt to allow pharmacies to dispense vaccinations without the need of a prescription.  Unbelievably, the pharmacists won the first round.  Both sides are using public health as their argument.  The pharmacists are arguing that the rates of the public health actually getting the flu vaccine (among others) are lower than the CDC recommends due to the lack of health insurance.  Doctors are arguing that pharmacists would be putting people at risk. It's quite ironic to me that the very people preaching about vaccinations and compliance are the ones who just want to make an extra dollar.  It's not about public health.  One point:

Hahn said her doctors have no problem with pharmacists administering routine flu or pneumonia vaccines without a prescription.

“But certain vaccines, for the safety of the public, need to be given in a medical (or) home situation,” she said.

Some of that, she said, is because a doctor would be more familiar with a patient’s family history and the possibility of allergic reactions. And some of it, Hahn said, is that giving a vaccine involves more than just injecting it.

She specifically mentioned the HPV vaccine being marketed to teen girls designed to prevent a type of virus transmitted by sexual contact. Hahn said a doctor who might prescribe this would tell a patient that the vaccine prevents neither pregnancy nor other sexually transmitted diseases, “not things that would be discussed (with a patient) by a pharmacist.”

“Patient safety has to come first,” Hahn said.

Patient safety has to come first?  You are telling me that it is assumed a pharmacist cannot tell a patient that the HPV virus won't protect them from STDs?

What is coming first here is the Almighty Dollar yet again.  Doctors don't want to lose more money to pharmacists.

And YES.  We did take years of pharmacology vs. a semester by most physicians.  Do we claim that the patients' health is at risk because a doctor accidentally gives two drugs that interact with one another together because he/she didn't know?

Article here.