A pharmacist in the Quad Counties says they’re dealing with supply chain issues, expanded scope and pandemic prevention all at once.
Michael Hatt, who owns the Medicine Shoppe in Port Hawkesbury, says the COVID-19 pandemic is exposing cracks in the medical supply chain.
He says more people are renewing prescriptions, and for longer than they usually would.
Hatt tells The Hawk it’s making it hard to fill prescriptions, and forces them to consider alternatives for some patients.
“These issues are going to be ongoing for the next couple weeks to couple months,” he says. “We should note, though, that we were having a lot of supply issues prior to the COVID crisis, so this has just compounded it even more.”
Hatt says officials with the province and the Nova Scotia College of Pharmacists are asking people not to renew prescriptions past 30 days to lessen the impact on the supply chain.
He says all of this is happening at the same time as the scope of pharmacists has expanded, something they’ve been lobbying government officials for the last 20 years.
“What’s happened now is all of the services we’ve been asking for we’re getting, but we’re getting within a matter of hours or days,” he says. “(We’re) being told to implement them, which is an administrative nightmare.”
Hatts says they’re committed to delivering the same services as before COVID-19 and their new services at the same standard.
He says pandemic prevention is top-of-mind as they try to maintain that standard, and get people the medication they need,
Hatt says he’s following provincial health guidelines to protect his employees and patients, but those directives keep changing.
“It’s certainly been a moving target,” he says. “Every day we go to work, we come up with a new pandemic plan.”
Hatt says they’re limiting the number of customers in the store at one time, putting up physical barriers, enforcing social distancing, using protective equipment when necessary, and disinfecting constantly.
He says he’s also changed staff hours, implementing rotations so staff members come into contact with each other less often, and he’s keeping vulnerable staff members out of public contact completely.
