Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to talk about that linking of data information between pharmacies, because if that data is not being collected now then we're not going to be able to make a decision later as to whether that is actually occurring or not.

The other thing I'd like to say—being a health professional myself—is, as you mentioned, that those conversations take a lot of time. They take a lot of investment. What I can see happening is the pharmacists having to have a lot of those conversations—sometimes needlessly, if there are people who are going from pharmacy to pharmacy. It does take a lot of time. And people do that; people do go to various doctors and doctor shop, and it takes a lot of time and investment. What I think we need to know is if that information will be collected upfront so that we can make a decision in a couple of years' time as to whether that is actually occurring?

I would encourage the minister to look at implementing that linking of pharmacy data now so that we can actually make a decision in the future. If we don't have the data now, we are simply unable to make that judgement in the future.

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