ROMA (ITALPRESS) – The evolution of the pharmacy market, characterized by the increasing presence of capital companies and large financial operators, is one of the main challenges that will affect the future of the profession of the pharmacist and, consequently, of the social security system of category. This is what highlighted the president of the National Agency for Drugs and Drug Care (Enpaf), Maurizio Pace, in the report presented to the bicameral Commission of control over the agencies responsible for the forms of compulsory social security, dedicated to the sustainability of social security management and the prospects for the development of the profession.
According to Peace, the profound demographic, organizational and economic transformations that are affecting the sector require a broader reading of the concept of social sustainability, which cannot be limited to financial indicators alone, but must also consider the evolution of the profession, the quality of employment, the ability to attract new generations of pharmacists and the maintenance of the health role of the pharmacy on the territory. Particular attention is paid to the progressive growth of pharmacies managed by capital companies, a phenomenon favored by the legislative changes of recent years. A transformation that, while responding to business and market dynamics, profoundly alters the composition of the category, with a progressive decrease of the owners pharmacists and an increase of the dependent pharmacists, producing effects intended to reflect also on the social balances of the Body.
“The advent of capital – Peace emphasizes – is a phenomenon that increasingly affects regulated professions and imposes a reflection on the consequences that the organizational transformations of the market can determine not only on the social security system, but also on the role of the professional and the trusting relationship with the citizen.”.
In the report it is also highlighted that the interest of investors focuses mainly on pharmacies placed in metropolitan areas and to greater profitability, making it even more necessary to protect the strategic role of rural pharmacies such as proximity requirements.
Peace then illustrated the measures already taken to strengthen the sustainability of the social security system and those currently in the study, including the extension of the notion of professional activity of the pharmacist, new instruments of redemption contributions, interventions in favour of young people and the resident, the strengthening of welfare policies and a remodelling of the discipline of the contribution of solidarity, taking into account that the rate of substitution of the compulsory Inps system will be strongly penalizing for generations in favor.
Finally, the body recalled the attention of the legislator and the government on the need for any future reform of the sector to take account not only of the objectives of economic efficiency and development of the market, but also of the effects that such changes can produce on the sustainability of the social security systems of the professions and on the maintenance of the pharmacy as a territorial health service within the National Health Service.
– Print office photos Enpaf –
(ITALPRESS).
