The Pharmacy Guild of Australia’s latest manoeuvre shows why governments must stop expanding pharmacists’ prescribing powers until the patient safety risks are addressed, a medical indemnity provider says.

Last week, the guild released modelling it had commissioned that concluded 30,000 hospitalisations would be prevented — and $1 billion in health spending saved — if pharmacists could prescribe S4 treatments for COPD, asthma, CVD risk reduction and contraception.

For example, pharmacists would avert about 300 CVD-related ED presentations by doing early protocol-driven CVD risk management, the modelling from health consultancy firm Health Technology Analysts said.

But the report has triggered Avant to publicly warn that a “critical safety threshold” is at risk of being crossed.