… but the AMA says that this claim is based on a misinterpretation of the data.
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia’s latest claim is that expanded scope of practice could prevent around 30,000 hospital admissions annually, thus reducing the pressure facing emergency departments.
AMA president Dr Danielle McMullen has described this position as “ludicrous”.
In a press release published last week, the guild specifically referenced the AMA’s 2026 ambulance ramping report card.
Headline findings from the report card were that more than half of all ambulance incidents now result in hospital presentations, that ambulances across Australia are spending more time ramped outside emergency departments and that the conditions are driving skilled doctors away from emergency work.
The medical association called for “strong investments in general practice and preventive medicine to keep people well, manage disease out of hospital, and contain rising demand for acute services”, alongside urgent action to address access block.
“The AMA is right to highlight the growing pressures facing Australia’s health system and the need for stronger investment in prevention, early intervention and accessible community-based care,” guild president Professor Trent Twomey said.
“The question now is how we deliver that care at scale and make better use of Australia’s healthcare workforce.”
Professor Twomey also cited a recent guild-commissioned report by HTANALYSTS which estimated that nationally consistent pharmacist-led prescribing could “free up more than 10 million GP appointments every year, [and] prevent around 30,000 hospital admissions annually”.
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His logic was that broader pharmacist-led prescribing would free up GP capacity to focus on complex cases, thus reducing pressure on hospitals.
“If we are serious about prevention, early intervention and keeping people out of hospital, we need to make it easier for patients to access care in their local community pharmacy,” Professor Twomey said.
The AMA’s Dr McMullen said that what the ramping report actually showed was that more than 50% of people arriving at emergency departments came in an ambulance.
“The log jam in our hospitals is people who are severely unwell and do need urgent treatment in an ED, not care that could be diverted at the time to other healthcare services,” she told The Medical Republic.
“Part of the solution for the hospital log jam and ambulance ramping is boosting support for preventive health and general practice care more broadly, because we know that for people with chronic disease, if we can manage their illness early or prevent their illness altogether, then we reduce the demand on our hospitals.
“That brings us right back to how do we do chronic disease management in the community, and that is in multidisciplinary, GP-led, team-based care.
“Pharmacists are a really critical part of that team, but they can’t do it alone – and so the suggestion that expanded scope of pharmacists in the absence of good clinical governance and strong team-based care will fix the hospital log jam is … a pretty ludicrous suggestion.”
Dr McMullen added that GPs were not opposed to pharmacists taking a larger role in patient care as part of multidisciplinary teams.
“That’s where the evidence lies, in terms of reducing readmissions and preventing preventable hospitalisations to do with medications,” she said.
“There is good value to that team-based care, but not the isolated community pharmacy [model, which risks] further fragmenting an already fragmented health system.”
