BACKGROUND Worldwide the demands on emergency and primary health care services are increasing. General practitioners and accident and emergency departments are often used unnecessarily for the treatment of minor ailments. Community pharmacy is often the first port of call for patients in the provision of advice on minor ailments, advising the patient on treatment or referring the patient to an ...

Opioid dependence, despite being the subject of significant public funding, remains a costly burden to Australian society in human and economic terms. The most cost-effective public health strategy for managing opioid dependence is opioid substitution therapy (OST), primarily through the use of methadone or buprenorphine. Supervised dispensing of OST from specialist clinics and community pharma...

The concept of quality in health services can be defined as meeting the set requirements at the lowest possible cost. Health care services need to be of good quality for achieving the desired outcomes. These principles were extended to the community pharmacy services via the philosophy of pharmaceutical care in the beginning of 1990’s. In pharmaceutical care, pharmacists take more responsibilit...

The purpose of this policy brief is to provide policy makers, researchers, and stakeholders with information about the closure of rural independently owned pharmacies, including pharmacies that are the sole source of access to local pharmacy services, from 2003 through 2010. This period coincides with the implementation of two major policies related to payment for prescription medications: (1) ...

OBJECTIVES To operationalise the concept of 'advanced practice roles' in pharmacy within the new integrated regionalised palliative care service model outlined in the Palliative Care Services Plan 2009-2016, SA Health. METHODS A working group was established under the auspices of the Palliative Care Clinical Network to progress the development of advanced practice pharmacist roles for regiona...

Correctional facilities include county, state, and federal jails, prisons, and detention centers whose populations may be adult or juvenile, U.S. citizen or noncitizen, sentenced inmates or detainees awaiting judicial proceedings. They may be managed directly by the relevant jurisdiction, run by a private company providing services under contract, or a combination of the two. Case law and histo...