VICDOC Autumn 2025 - Magazine - Page 62
D R DA N I EL L E M C M U L L E N
A
s a general practitioner, I am
constantly dealing with the profound
impacts of medicine shortages.
It has become a frustrating reality that
many crucial drugs will often be in short
supply. A quick glance at the Therapeutic
Goods Administration’s (TGA) medicine
shortage reports database showed there
were more than 400 shortages at the
time of writing.
By and large, the TGA does a great job
of managing these shortages in incredibly
difficult circumstances.
Supply chain disruptions are not new
and Covid only exacerbated them. While
the pandemic is over, we are still seeing
significant medicine shortages, and it
is obvious that it will take some time to
achieve a long-term solution to what
has become a chronic problem in our
health system.
We commend the TGA for doing its
utmost to address these shortages,
and their strategy to improve their
oversight and management of shortages
and discontinuations will improve the
situation. Improvements are needed to
make Australia’s response more proactive
— and the TGA has recognised this.
One aspect that we still need to see
improvement on is the communication of
medicine shortages. As the President of
the AMA, I expect that I would be alerted
to new shortages well in advance through
our organisation, but I still regularly find
out about a shortage when my patients
can’t get a script filled or our local
pharmacy calls our practice to tell us they
are low on stock of a certain medicine.
This is a problem for doctors, it’s a
problem for patients, and it’s a problem
for pharmacists. The TGA’s own research
found that 47.2 per cent of pharmacists
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AMA VI C TO RIA
spend 1-3 hours per week managing
medicine shortages, while 28.4 per cent
spend 4-7 hours per week.
The impact on the entire community
is immense.
This is why we are calling for a dedicated
medicine shortage forum to improve
coordination and communication
about disruptions to the supply of
crucial medicine.
Our proposal is outlined in a submission
to the TGA’s proposed changes to reporting
requirements for medicine shortages
and discontinuations.
We need to move from reactive to
proactive approaches, and with more
whole-of-sector information sharing.
We need prescribers and pharmacists
to have useful information about how to
respond to a shortage, and clear, consistent
communications to doctors, pharmacists
and patients ahead of time.
A dedicated medicines shortage forum
can replace the current ad-hoc approach
with a regular meeting of key stakeholders
from medicine, pharmacy, consumers,
wholesalers and sponsors. This would be
similar to the Medicine Shortages
Working Group established for the
Covid-19 pandemic.
This proactive strategy would allow for
better forecasting, faster responses, and
a more streamlined approach to managing
medicine supply disruptions. Importantly,
it would lead to better communication to
our members.
We've also suggested implementing a
'traffic light' system to better communicate
phased supply shortages to practitioners.
For example, a ‘yellow light’ could indicate
to practitioners to continue current patients
on a particular product, but not prescribe
any new patients. This simple yet effective
