Primary care physicians are advocating for the restoration of their authority to dispense medications directly from their offices, a practice that ended definitively fifteen years ago. Currently, medication dispensing is exclusively handled by pharmacists. Physicians argue this change would make treatment more accessible, especially for patients in small communities, while pharmacists remain firmly opposed.
“We would like to loudly call for the return of a competency we had and lost about 15 years ago—the dispensing of medications in primary care offices,” stated Petr Šonka, chairman of the Association of General Practitioners. He explains that this would address patient complaints about pharmacies substituting prescribed medications or requiring multiple visits due to insufficient stock—particularly problematic for rural residents.
The benefits would be especially significant for elderly patients, those with mobility issues, and individuals living in smaller, remote communities far from pharmacies. Doctors could provide medications during home visits, eliminating the need for patients to figure out how to obtain their prescriptions.
Currently, general practitioners can only dispense medication in emergency situations when a patient requires urgent care and a pharmacy is inaccessible. Since the law changed in 2009, physicians face penalties for routine medication dispensing. Several violations have been identified during inspections over the past decade.
Martin Kopecký, Vice President of the Czech Chamber of Pharmacists, strongly opposes this initiative, arguing that Šonka’s claims are misleading as practitioners could never dispense medications except in exceptional circumstances. “This goes directly against developments in other EU countries, where society is trying to utilize the easy accessibility of pharmacies and the professional expertise of pharmacists by involving them in various preventive programs,” he told Novinky.
He further explained that most EU countries prohibit medication dispensing in doctor’s offices for multiple reasons, including the principle that prescribers shouldn’t profit from dispensing—which could tempt overprescribing—and that pharmacist oversight of prescriptions is essential, as demonstrated by their May medication error monitoring project.