Manitoba pharmacists will soon be able to prescribe birth control, HIV medication: NDP

The Manitoba government is pledging to give pharmacists more powers to prescribe medications, including birth control, directly to clients starting this summer.

“We’ve been waiting for this for a very long time,” said Marianna Pozdirca, a board member at Pharmacists Manitoba.

“We have a health-care system that is strained and we have over 1,000 pharmacists in the province who are educated to do more than dispensing.”

Pozdirca and her pharmacist colleagues have approval to write prescriptions for a small list of minor ailments, ranging from acne to oral thrush, at present.

Their full range of skills and consulting rooms, which are used for related assessments and immunizations, are underutilized right now, she said.

Pharmacists-in-training in every province except Quebec take a standardized licensing exam, yet Alberta and Saskatchewan have wider scopes of practice than Manitoba, an online database run by the Canadian Pharmacists Association said.

Manitoba’s lone Liberal MLA, Cindy Lamoureux, raised the restrictions on these health-care providers’ abilities in question period Wednesday.

“If pharmacists had more prescribing authority, wait times in clinics and emergency rooms could go down,” the MLA for Tyndall Park told the house.

Lamoureux noted counterparts in B.C. — the first province to start covering oral hormone pills, Plan B and related contraceptives in April 2023 — have the power to assess and prescribe birth control.

Asked about whether Manitoba would follow suit, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara issued a straightforward reply: “Yes.”

“That is a very reasonable expansion of scope for pharmacists in Manitoba. We want pharmacists who graduate in our great province to know that right here, in their own province, they can practise to their full scope and that their scope is going to be enhanced,” Asagwara responded.

Speaking with pharmacists gathered in the public gallery, the health minister said they want to make Manitoba a leader in leveraging the health workers’ wide-ranging education.

A number of regulatory and legislative changes need to be made, Asagwara added.

A provincial spokesperson later confirmed the government is working on regulatory changes that will allow pharmacists to prescribe birth control and some HIV medications.

“We’re not looking to be siloed off from other health-care professions. We are all part of the circle of care for patients.”–Marianna Pozdirca

Pharmacists should be able to start prescribing birth control in the coming weeks, the spokesperson said, adding that the remaining expansion is anticipated this summer.

Pozdirca said pharmacists are cautiously optimistic because they’ve heard similar rhetoric during previous legislative sessions.

Ultimately, significant updates would be beneficial for everyone because they would expand access to primary care and alleviate administrative burden on physicians, she said.

“We’re not looking to be siloed off from other health-care professions. We are all part of the circle of care for patients,” the pharmacist added.

Pharmacists Manitoba is advocating for enhanced assessment powers, as well as provincial coverage for more evaluations to reduce barriers for patients, especially those who do not have a family doctor or live in rural and remote communities.

Manitobans must pay for almost all assessments that pharmacists can provide — even if they are free of charge at a family doctor’s office or walk-in clinic. Alternatively, pharmacies have to absorb those costs.

These health-care providers are reimbursed for certain drugs and dispensing fees in Manitoba. They can only charge the province for assessing uncomplicated bladder infections.

Smokers in the province are eligible for free cessation-related counselling, owing to a unique social impact bond model set up by the former Progressive Conservative government.

“If we’re going to allow pharmacists to prescribe for birth control or for anything else, they need to be reimbursed for their time fairly,” PC health critic Kathleen Cook said Friday.

Cook noted the Tories campaigned on further expanding pharmacists’ scope of practice during the 2023 election campaign.

She urged the health minister to continue growing these providers’ ability to prescribe to align Manitoba with other jurisdictions.

Pharmacists are scheduled to meet with representatives from Asagwara’s office next week.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca