In Australia pharmacy ownership is unique. You must be a pharmacist to own a pharmacy and the Pharmacy Guild, a member organisation of pharmacy owners, negotiates directly with the Government for the way pharmacies are remunerated. This is the model we know in Australia yet it is very different from the model I came to know in the UK.
The Community Pharmacy industry has been receiving much negative press this week due to the above arrangement as simplified above. The public have been fed allegations of current arrangements for pharmacy owners being non-competitive and making many pharmacists very wealthy. It seems many critical of the current pharmacy landscape are pushing towards a free ownership system like the UK. The consequences of such a move here in Australia could be potentially detrimental to the industry and would alter the landscape of healthcare permanently