‘Real struggle’: Pharmacists in Alberta facing double-whammy in 2025 with provincial cuts and PrescribeIT fees

With the start of 2025, pharmacists in Alberta are facing a double-whammy with both cuts from the provincial government and new prescribing fees from PrescribeIT.Back in November, the province began rolling back service compensation fees for initial patient assessments and cutting the number of annual care plan follow-up appointments for which pharmacists can be reimbursed.“It's a real struggle, real struggle from a staffing standpoint. Professional service numbers are down in billing. It's becoming apparent that this is not sustainable in the pharmacy that I own here,” Calgary pharmacy owner Trish Molberg told Pharmacy Practice + Business.Read: Alberta Pharmacists’ Association says government cuts will be detrimentalEven though the maximum number of billable follow-up appointments has been cut from 12 to four, Molberg says she still hasn’t imposed a limit on follow-up appointments for her patients and is currently absorbing the financial hit—but it’s unclear how much longer she can sustain this. “I have always two pharmacists working—one at the counter, one doing consultations, clinical work. And so that obviously isn't sustainable anymore at the at the frequency of billing opportunities that we have now,” she said.And on top of that, pharmacists using the e-prescribing tool PrescribeIT are now subject to a 20-cent fee per prescription as of Jan. 1.Noha ElSayed, another pharmacy owner based in Calgary, had previously used PrescribeIT and called it a “fantastic tool,” but couldn’t justify keeping the service after the prescribing fee was announced.“Paying per prescription is just nonsense . . . this is going to be like huge amount of money,” she told Pharmacy Practice + Business.“If it was like a monthly fee, maybe then pharmacies can skip faxes and stop paying for the fax phone number and keep PrescribeIT. I mean, the way it's structured right now, I don't think it's fair and it’s not acceptable.”Matt Tachuk, director of pharmacy practice at the Alberta Pharmacists’ Association, says most of the high-volume users of PrescribeIT that he’s spoken to “will likely continue” using the service for now, despite the new fee, but that could change after they receive their first invoice in February.“I’ve been told that for the most part, most pharmacies are status quo, the high users of PrescribeIT will likely continue, those with lesser volume are on the fence but that may change in February as that is when stores will receive their first invoice for the use of the service. Once that goes out it may create more of a discussion/conversation around whether the sites continue to use the service or not,” he said in an email to Pharmacy Practice + Business.Read: Pharmacists, physicians dig in their heels regarding stance on PrescribeITElSayed’s pharmacy has also taken a financial hit from the provincial government cuts. On top of that, she says in the last several years, the workload for her and her staff has significantly increased as more patients turn to pharmacists for primary care amid the ongoing shortage of physicians.“Many people, they don't even have family physicians. So, we have to do everything for the patient, which we are happy to do, but also we need to get paid,” she said.“My staff are doing almost double the work that they were doing a few years ago and we are paid less and this is coming out of my own pocket money as an owner because I cannot reduce their salaries.”Meanwhile, Molberg has been speaking with government officials and asking the province to reconsider the pharmacy cuts, arguing that pharmacists are the “most accessible and least costly to the system.”“You've given us the right to have full scope of practice since 2010 in Alberta,” she said. “Let us work within our full scope of practice to help save the budget. We can be a solution here, but the cuts that happened in November, that's not a solution.”

‘Real struggle’: Pharmacists in Alberta facing double-whammy in 2025 with provincial cuts and PrescribeIT fees

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