Tag: apoteket

17 Jan. – where’d you get that prescription?

a happy customer with a filled prescription
pic: apoteket.se

Apoteket AB announced today that it had bought a substantial share in Doctor24, one of the online doctor services that have become so popular over the last few years. Popular because you can actually talk to a doctor from the comfort of your home and not sit in hard chairs getting coughed on by strangers for hours on end – only to be told to take a few aspirin and go home. Sadly, there is no comparison between healthcare centers (vårdcentraler) they way they’re set up now, and your phone.

What makes this news is that Apoteket AB is state-owned. The same state that is trying to limit, tax, tar, feather and drive out of town online doctor services because they are said to drive up healthcare costs by encouraging unnecessary doctor visits. They are too easy to use, it seems.

Ibrahim Baylan, Minister for Business, Industry and Innovation and responsible for questions regarding state-owned businesses, passed on commenting more than saying that Apotek AB makes its own decisions: “It’s the company’s board that is responsible for the operation of the company. The decision to invest in Doctor24 is an operative decision that has been made by Apotek’s board” Baylan told SvD.

Anna Starbrink, healthcare councilperson for Stockholm, is seeing red. In an comment to SvD, she said “When we go to an Apotek now, we’re encouraged to turn to Doctor24 to renew our prescriptions. And then the bill for 500 kronor goes to taxpayers.”

“We’re supposed to prioritize the patients with greatest need, and here we have to pay online doctors for something that is already part of the regular care system. It fuels an unnecessary extra cost” she added.

But Tobias Perdahl, chief medical officer at Doctor24 put his finger on the problem. “She’s basically right” he said. “This should be easily covered by the regular care system. But it’s common that it takes days or weeks to renew a prescription. A patient without a prescription is a big problem.”

Anna Starbrink is looking to start a larger debate, SvD reports. ” We don’t accept that a healthcare provider owns a pharmacy – and the question is whether or not a pharmacy should be allowed to own a healthcare provider. What the effect will be is an important question and needs to be looked at.”

(PS. Apotek AB should not be confused with the other private Apotek chains like Apotek Hjärta, Apotek Lejon, etc.)

26 June – A hard pill to swallow

aftonbladet.se

Especially if you can’t find it. The pill, THAT pill, and at least one of the brands, will be out of stock until at least the end of the summer, wrote SvD today. Another hormone replacement therapy pill (for the more mature woman’s needs one might say) is also out of stock for at least the next few months. (Also pregnancy prevention pills for cats are out of stock, though I am not comparing.)  

That so many prescription medications are suddenly not available at the local pharmacy – or at any pharmacy anywhere in the country – has been a recurring news item for several months. But are pharmacies the problem? Are they just greedy money machines that won’t order what they don’t want to order and don’t care about the old and the sick and the in pain? In a debate article from May 19 (dn.se) two Stockholm doctors say no, and that in reality Swedish pharmacies knock themselves out trying to find medicine for their customers (a pharmacist showed me recently how to find a pharmacy that had what I wanted in stock – on fass.se). 

For those who weren’t here at the time, previous to 2009 pharmacies were state-owned affairs, like Systembolaget. Since the deregulation, things have improved greatly, like business hours, numbers of stores (at least in the cities) and an improved selection (state-owned tampons were not fun). It’s uncertain where the bottle neck is. After all, the pharmacies don’t make money on medication they haven’t sold, and the pill has a pretty captive audience.