On the 75th anniversary of the Chifley Labor Government’s introduction of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), Australia’s pharmacy sector has received a major financial boost in response to concerns about the 60-day prescribing initiative.
Community pharmacies will be paid more for dispensing medicines, pharmacies outside the big cities will have their location allowance doubled, patients needing opioid dependency treatment will save hundreds of dollars, and pharmacy medicine stocks will be assured.
From 1 July, all community pharmacies will be paid 7% more for dispensing PBS medicines, giving the average metropolitan pharmacy more than $41,000 extra per year in payments for services like dispensing, handling, administration, and infrastructure.
The latest boost to pharmacy payments is nearly double the 3.6% indexation of Medicare rebates that also took effect as of 1 July 2023.
For a standard script for a ready prepared item, such as atorvastatin, pharmacies will receive an extra $0.85, taking the fee to $12.99 per script.
An average pharmacy in the following locations will receive:
- a major metropolitan area: $41,229.98
- a large regional centre: $43,118.72
- rural towns: $26,857.00 to $51,746.92
- a remote community: $18,742.23
- a very remote community: $12,448.82.
Regional, rural, and remote pharmacies will also benefit from a doubling of the total annual budget for the Regional Pharmacy Maintenance Allowance (RPMA), a $39.8 million program that will see pharmacies which dispense 50,000 scripts eligible for payments ranked according to their location:
- a large rural town (e.g., Broadwater WA) – an increase of $3,000 to a total of $6,000
- a medium rural town (e.g., Margaret River WA) – an increase of $10,360 to a total of $21,965
- a small rural town (e.g., Adelong NSW) – an increase of $17,720 to a total of $37,930
- a remote community (e.g., Katherine NT) – an increase of $25,080 to a total of $53,895
- a very remote community (e.g., Denham WA) – an increase of $32,440 to a total of $69,860.
The rate of the RPMA will depend on the volume of scripts a pharmacy dispenses, with some of Australia’s most remote pharmacies eligible to receive more than $90,000 per year in assistance to keep services available in rural communities.
The government also introduced minimum stockholding requirements designed to help protect Australian patients, pharmacists, and prescribers from the impact of global medicines shortages, by ensuring that Australian manufacturers are better placed to continue supply.
Manufacturers of more than 2,900 brands of common medicine are required to hold a minimum of four- or six-months’ worth of stock onshore in Australia.
Also beginning 1 July 2023, Australians with opioid dependency will no longer have to pay uncapped out-of-pocket fees for their medication. Instead, they will have access to the medicine they need on the PBS, with the government paying pharmacies to provide these medications.
Rather than paying up to $200 a month in out-of-pocket costs, patients will simply pay the usual PBS co-payment – up to $30 for everyone with a Medicare card or $7.30 for concession cardholders. These co-payments will also contribute towards the PBS Safety Net threshold.
This amounts to a $377 million investment in community pharmacies and will provide much needed cost of living relief for tens of thousands of patients – four out of five Australians receiving treatment for opioid dependency are on income support.
Transition arrangements will apply until 30 November 2023, which will ensure that private clinics, non-PBS pharmacies and other dosing sites can still provide these medicines to patients while they transition to a PBS-approved pharmacy.