Guideline on Canadian pharmacies
Licensed Drugstores in Canada
- Canadian Healthcare in short terms
Canada has traditionally been considered as one of the best places in the world to live due to the presence of a favorable economic climate, beauty and diversity of its nature and a socially-oriented healthcare service. Canadian population is relatively small, given the vast territory of this country. Many of Canada’s small and large cities owe their existence to the availability of natural resource-related industries and employment of country’s population in them. Thus, sales volumes of many pharmacies also depend on the success in these key sectors of economy.
Canada’s Health Law and its basic criteria (public, public administration, completeness and complexity, universality and accessibility) are national, and the financing of these services provided by law is allocated by the national government in a certain proportion of each province and territory, which, in turn, are responsible for the use of medicines and provision of medical services.
The Health Canada Law establishes that Canadian Government is responsible for paying for medicines when used in a hospital. This procedure led to the existence of different drug plans for outpatient patients throughout the country each containing its own unique guidelines for reimbursing the cost of medicines. According to a study recently conducted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, 90% of the total population of the country have some type of insurance coverage for standard drug costs, and 10% of the population are not insured at all.
- Pharmacies and pharmacists
Medicines for prescriptions are dispensed for more than a decade in Canada. Of this total number of pharmacies, individual private pharmacies (not included in the brand pharmacy chains) account for 30%. This means that each pharmacy produces a medication leave for 130 recipes per day.
For many known reasons (such as aging population, rising costs for modern methods of treatment, increasing longevity rate, etc.) due to the increase in prescriptions issued, Canadian pharmacists are now busier than ever. This problem is further exacerbated by the significant shortage of pharmacists in the retail sector, despite the fact that there are more than 19 000 public service pharmacies with all necessary licenses in the country. Part of the problem is associated with an increase in the number of new pharmacies and the duration of their hours of operation. Given that the United States also suffer from a significant shortage of pharmacists, Canadian pharmacists (especially students of pharmaceutical universities) have become objects of powerful U.S. recruiting program.
- Competition of drugstores
In the 1990s, it was expected that emergency of drug order services by mail and change in the status of many drugs from prescription to over-the-counter drugs would have a big impact on the practice of pharmacies serving our population. The first factor was not an impact on pharmacy practice, as it was by the latter. Provincial governments have approved a national three-level format for grouping medicines according to which all drugs that are to be sold only in pharmacies are classified as follows: non-narcotic, controlled prescription drugs; subject to be released only at pharmacies without the possibility of self-selection by the patient (‘behind the counter’, Group 2); subject to implementation only in pharmacies with permission to self-select their patient (OTC, Group 3).
As a result of excretion of drugs from these groups, an increasing number of drugs that previously could only be found in pharmacies fell on the shelves of self-service stores. To expand the range of medicines in such outlets (including those referred to above groups), it will be necessary to open a pharmacy section and include a pharmacist in staff. Given the shortage of personnel described above, this is not what happens successfully.
The development of pharmacy activities on the basis of the online services and the practice of electronic prescription of medicines changed the face of Canadian pharmacies in serving the population and had some impact on pharmacy practice. In connection with these trends, concern is expressed about the privacy of patients and its confidentiality, maintaining standards of pharmacy practice, as well as safety / legal issues (i.e., the identification of the person who prescribed the prescription) for obtaining prescriptions. In conditions of large-scale penetration of American media into Canadian culture (primarily in the field of journal press and television), Canadian pharmacists have the advantages of being able to observe and study all activities in the U.S.
As an interesting note, it can be noted that, due to the constant attention to what passes ‘across the border’ in the field of drug prices and their availability in the market, an unexpected market niche for Canadian border cities has opened due to which it has become commonplace for Americans to visit a Canadian doctor and get a Canadian prescription and then visit a Canadian pharmacy for prescription drugs before leaving home, which allows them to save quite a large amount of money. This did not go unnoticed for the politicians, however, apparently, it will cause more problems for the American side than for the Canadian one.
Generic Pharmacies
Generic pharmacy implies online website for selection of diverse generic medicines mainly produced in India. The products are aimed at increasing the comfort and quality people’s lives. The products are produced in factories in India and meet the international quality standards – GMP, ISO. Requirements to generic products are identical to the branded originals. The specifics of the work of generic pharmacies lies in anonymity. The received goods come in neutral package without identification marks. From the moment a person makes an order until he or she receives the parcel, no third-parties involved.
Moreover, products are much cheaper than the ones that are offered at traditional offline pharmacies. For example, generic Viagra will cost an average by 7 times cheaper from retail market value. The goal of generic pharmacies is to create a universal resource for customers. The functional website can be adapted to any device: place an order and track the delivery from a smartphone, tablet, laptop without unnecessary movements and time loss. Generic pharmacies have implemented a smart search engine. A customer finds particular positions in a couple of clicks without getting confused in the range and a load of unnecessary goods.
Fraudulent Pharmacies: “Must-Know” Guide
Lately, Canadian online drugstores and websites selling medications, as well as related products, have become extremely popular. These online pharmacies offer tested drugs for fast and safe delivery. In the event, a medicine requires a doctor’s prescription, the buyer will need to present or send scanned copy of a prescription when he collects the goods or receives them by courier.
The choice in favor of buying medicines via the Internet is the most profitable. The correctly chosen pharmacy gives a buyer guarantee that the goods will be checked and quality-tested. It goes without saying that you can get caught by the tricks of scammers who sell counterfeit medicines. However, in this case, as a rule, everything depends directly on the buyer. If a person is not convinced that a store has the right to sell medicines, and the products sold meet all the norms and quality standards, this is he who is to be blamed for being caught in the ruse of scammers. Most modern online pharmacies place scanned documents in the relevant section of the website. For those stores that work transparently, this information is no secret. In turn, a customer who visited the store and decided to make a purchase can rest assured that he will not be disappointed by the choice made.
How to detect an online drugstore that does not meet the requirements of a buyer? In fact, it’s not so difficult. To do this, you need to make sure that the store provides its clients with advice from a professional specialist – a pharmacist or a medical expert. In addition, it should be checked whether a phone number and address specified in the contact information on the website are correct. Every online pharmacy that was not created with a fraudulent aim does not hide this information. In case there are goods in store’s catalogue that are simply not in traditional pharmacy or are prohibited for sale, such a store can also cause suspicion. The sale of innovative generics that have unknown names gives almost a 100% guarantee that the store is fraudulent.
Thus, before you make a purchase in an online store, you should study it as thoroughly as possible. It is mandatory to go to the section of the site where information is provided with a description of the store. In case the detailed information has been provided, you can easily start searching for the necessary goods in the store’s catalogue. The online store of medical products should provide to its customers with as much details about a particular medical product as possible. In this case, we are talking about the name of the medicine, its composition (components), contraindications, detailed instructions for use, possible side-effects, information on storage of the medicine, as well as contact details of the manufacturer. This information will make sure that the medicines sold at an online store are not low-quality. If at least one of the above criteria is missing, purchase of a medical product is not recommended.
Before you make a purchase in a medical online store, you also need to inquire about the terms of delivery of the goods. In some stores, delivery is free, if the purchase was made for a certain amount. Also, there are online pharmacies, which deliver the medicines purchased by the client at any time of the day. Thus, deciding to take as much as possible the issue of buying medicines via the Internet, the likelihood that you will buy a quality product is very high.
