Aged care residents $800 worse off under pharmacy reforms

Aged care residents will be forced to pay more each year for their weekly medicine as a result of Labor’s move to double drug dispensing, new data reveals.

Aged care residents will be forced to pay more than $800 per year each for their weekly medicine as a result of Labor’s move to double drug dispensing, new data reveals, as the pharmacy sector ramps up its attacks against the policy.

Aged-care residents will be forced to pay more than $800 a year each for their weekly medicine as a result of Labor’s move to double drug dispensing, new data reveals, as the pharmacy sector ramps up its attacks against the policy.

A financial analysis ­com­mission­ed by the Pharmacy Guild has found elderly Australians ­living in residential aged care will pay at least $806 to have their medicine packed and delivered when Labor’s 60-day dispensing policy begins on September 1.

Medicines are currently individually portioned and delivered to 188,000 aged-care residents each week by pharmacies free of charge in the form of webster packs, with the cost subsidised by the government through dispensing fees.

However, the pharmacy sector says it will no longer be able to cover the cost of these services because of dispensing fees being halved under Labor’s new pharmacy reforms.

According to the government’s own modelling conducted by the Office of Impact Analysis, pharmacies will lose on average $158,000 a year each due to a reduction in dispensing fees.

The government’s analysis noted “pharmacy owners will receive significantly less PBS income due to the decrease in the volume of dispensing-related remuneration resulting from the proposed PBS changes”.

The guild’s figures are based on an estimation that it costs pharmacies more than $13 a patient a week to package medicines – using a figure from the Department of Health indexed to inflation – plus transport and delivery costs.

The new costing comes amid a debate over aged-care funding, with older Australians likely to be paying more for nursing home ­accommodation and everyday living expenses after a key aged-care taskforce reached broad consensus on the policy change.

Pharmacists have been campaigning against Labor’s 60-day dispensing policy, which will allow GPs to write scripts for two months of medicine from September, amid concern it will halve the amount of money pharmacists receive from the government for dispensing medicine.

The policy, which doubles the amount of medicine accessed from a single script, has been ­welcomed by doctors, who say ­patients will save money.

Pharmacy Guild national president Trent Twomey said elderly residents were being forced to pay for a policy change that “doesn’t benefit them”.

Pharmacy Guild national president Trent Twomey and Health Minister Mark Butler. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

“The Albanese government is unfairly forcing a huge new cost on aged-care residents because they haven’t consulted and they don’t understand what they are doing,” Mr Twomey said.

Health Minister Mark Butler said the guild’s costings were ­“another cynical and desperate scare campaign from the pharmacy lobby to deny six million Australians cheaper medicines”.

“In addition to the $1.2bn ­reinvestment into community pharmacy as part of the government’s cheaper medicines policy, we are also investing $350m for community pharmacies to provide pharmacists to work on-site in residential aged-care homes in a clinical role to support medication management,” Mr Butler said.

According to the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare, up to 91 per cent of people in Australian Residential Aged Care Facilities are prescribed more than five medicines, while up to 74 per cent of care ­recipients take more than nine medicines.

The Australian has previously revealed that the Albanese government was yet to complete modelling on its 60-day dispensing policy, despite announcing it two months ago.

Opposition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston said Labor was failing older Australians by failing to consult on a number of policies, including 24/7 nurses and 60-day dispensing.

“The government must ­urgently address these serious concerns to ensure that older Australians continue to have ­affordable access to critical medication,” Senator Ruston told The Australian.