Ontario College of Pharmacists Corporate Pressures Hotline goes live

The Ontario College of Pharmacists has launched a hotline that pharmacy staff can use to report when they are feeling forced to work in ways that hamper their ability to deliver quality patient care. It encourages pharmacy professionals to call 416-962-4861 x 3700 or email pressureshotline@ocpinfo.com to report issues affecting their ability to deliver quality care. The calls are anonymous and will not be reported to employers. The hotline is one of more than a dozen moves the Ontario College of Pharmacists (OCP) said it was taking to combat business practices that hamper pharmacy staffers’ ability to do their jobs well. A recent progress update outlined the others, which include meeting with Shoppers Drug Mart, Loblaw, Rexall, and Walmart to discuss corporate pressures and prepare a position statement on PPNs. The OCP is responding in four diverse areas: regulatory programs, data and information sharing, legislation and regulation, and policy. In terms of regulatory changes, it’s reviewing how it accredits pharmacies and considering including the contracts and conduct of directors in those decisions. And it’s hiring legal experts to advise on investigating people who are part of corporate decisions that might affect pharmacy staffers’ ability to do their work according to their professional obligations. It will also be looking at the laws around pharmacies, including the Drug and Pharmacies Regulation Act. Read: OCP to launch corporate pressure hotline The update offers more details about the college’s new zero-tolerance policy for business practices that affected pharmacists' and pharmacy technicians’ ability to provide patient care. When it introduced that policy in March, the college promised to consider “every tool available” to counter these issues. That policy was in response to concerns about pressures to perform MedsCheck reviews and other “volume-focused” corporate influences that it heard about in a series of town halls. “We heard that these pressures affect the well-being of pharmacists who fear, or experience, reprisal if they fail to meet corporate objectives and whose health is suffering due to the tension between trying to deliver high-quality care to their patients while coping with corporate pressures to increase the number of services delivered,” Shenda Tanchak, registrar and CEO of the Ontario College of Pharmacists, said in a press release at the time. As part of the recent update, the college promised to publicly share the results of those surveys and town halls and create a feasibility report on the ideas that it heard. Read: OCP releases statement around Sivajanan Sivapalan conflict-of-interest investigation

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