The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has ramped up its campaign to ditch 60-day dispensing following a decision by the Government to bring forward the eighth Community Pharmacy Agreement (CPA).
The Guild believed that the decision was an admission of the “damage its 60-day dispensing policy and its associated funding cuts are already inflicting on patient services, aged care residents and pharmacies,” and called for the postponement of the changes to align with the new CPA.
Pharmacy Guild Vice-President Anthony Tassone said it would be a “giant policy failure” to wait until next June to finalise the new CPA agreement while introducing 60-day dispensing related funding cuts in the meantime.
“If the government doesn’t hit pause on the policy, it will cause further pain and damage to patients, aged care residents and pharmacies until next June,” Mr Tassone said.
“All pharmacists want to make medicines more affordable for their patients, but we can’t do this in a way that forces hundreds of pharmacies to close, puts thousands of pharmacy workers out of a job, and increases the cost of services for every aged care resident in the country.
“Given the impact of 60-day dispensing on patients and community pharmacies across the nation, the eighth Community Pharmacy Agreement must restore funding cuts broken in the seventh CPA.”
Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mr Mark Butler, made the announcement at a doorstop press conference on 7 August, where he acknowledged the impact of the guild’s campaign.
“I’ve taken the view and I’ve heard the soundings from the pharmacy guild that we need to deliver that business certainty to pharmacies sooner than that,” he said.
However, he also took aim at the guild for reaching new lows and touting what he called ‘complete rubbish’ in their attempts to derail the scheme, which will come into effect from 1 September.
“Over the course of these three months, we’ve seen some pretty desperate scare campaigns from the pharmacy lobby. First, we saw a scare campaign that this would be unsafe for patients, which has been debunked by doctors, debunked by the medicines’ experts, and since dropped.
“We then saw a scare campaign that this would somehow create medicine shortages – again debunked by industry, by the medicines experts who run the PBS system themselves.
“But now they’ve plumbed new depths with this scare campaign that suggests that aged care residents will have to pay some new fee, depicted by some as a new tax for medicines that they receive in aged care facilities.
“Now, not only is this base, not only is it self-serving and cynical, it’s also complete rubbish.”
Minister Butler stressed that aged care facilities were funded to take responsibility for medication management for their residents, while noting that some facilities had effectively outsourced that responsibility to their local community pharmacy.
“And that, no doubt, reflects the fact that being the supplier of medicines to an aged care facility as a pharmacy can be a lucrative source of revenue for pharmacies. For a 100-bed facility, for example, it might mean as much as $150,000 a year in income just for the dispensing and handling fees for those medicines,” he said.
“But let me be clear, these arrangements are the responsibility of an aged care facility. And any cynical attempt by the pharmacy lobby or anyone else to create a loophole to start charging aged care residents for this will be shut down by this Government very quickly.”
The Guild has said that pharmacists all around the country have already been “forced to cut staff and trading hours and would need to start charging for previously free services,” as “proof that 60-day dispensing funding cuts were a threat to community pharmacies,” based on the findings of an inhouse, nationwide survey of 1,000 community pharmacies.
The survey revealed that almost one in four (23%) had reduced opening hours and more than half (54%) had increased fees for services, with 250 pharmacy workers made redundant. (Ed note* though as the policy is yet to implemented one fails to see how this is related given current economic conditions in Australia).
Mr Tassone said the decision to bring forward CPA negotiations made a mockery of the Health Minister’s claims that the Guild’s public awareness campaign was a scare campaign.
“The Government has decided to bring forward negotiations for a new agreement by a one year, acknowledging they have got the implementation of 60-days completely wrong, and we need a new agreement before it is brought in.”
The pharmacy guild has won the support of the Australian Patients Association, Pain Australia, Better Access Australia and the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, who have joined the guild calls for the policy to be delayed by supporting a disallowance motion put forward by the Liberal party in the Senate – a disallowance motion that the party have just announced will be dropped due to an inability to gain sufficient numbers.
In a blow to the guild’s plans, the Australian Greens indicated that they will not be supporting the motion to disallow in the Senate, following consultation with consumers and health care providers.
Senator Jordon Steele-John, Australian Greens spokesperson for health said that the Greens had pushed the government to announce measures that would provide additional support to regional and rural pharmacies, along with a commitment to bring forward the negotiation on the next Community Pharmacy Agreement.
“We’ve heard from the community that their priority is cost of living relief, additionally the move to 60-day dispensing will support disabled and chronically ill people as they will undertake fewer trips to the pharmacist,” Senator Steele-John said.
Pain Australia Chief Executive Giulia Jones believed the policy should be delayed until the viability of pharmacies in rural and regional areas was guaranteed.
“We believe there needs to be time to ensure no rural and regional pharmacies will close, when people with chronic pain already struggle to get access to the pain medications they need in rural and regional Australia,” she said, while Better Access Australia Chairwoman Felicity McNeill PSM noted that cheaper medicine “was worth nothing if there was no one in your local area to dispense it.”
“Better Access Australia are seeing huge pressures on pharmacies to deliver the Opiate Dependence Treatment Program because the Government didn’t do its homework before rushing out the announcement,” she said.
“The parliament needs to give everyone in the community the time to make sure this reform works for everyone: patients, pharmacies, suppliers, wholesalers, government.”
However, the Minister for Health reiterated that the decision to allow doctors to issue 60-day prescriptions for certain common medicines was based on expert advice.
“It will halve the cost of medicines for people who are not on a medicine for a short period of time, but are on these medicines for years, if not decades, if not the rest of their lives,” he said.
“It will also be good to free up millions of GP consults, which we all know are desperately needed right now – free them up from routine repeats script appointments to much more complex needs that are out there in the community with long waiting lists.
“And it will also be good for health. We know from overseas evidence, given that most countries we compare ourselves to already do this, that it improves medication compliance.”