People can expect shorter trading hours, fewer services, worsening medicine shortages and closures of local pharmacies under the Federal Government’s 60-day dispensing policy, according to the Pharmacy Guild of Australia.
The Guild says the policy will see a $3.5B cut to community pharmacies, leaving millions of patients across the country worse off after the change comes into effect on September 1.
The 60-day dispensing policy means that people will be able to receive two months’ worth of common PBS-listed medicines for the price of a single prescription, rather than the current one month’s supply.
Pharmacist Raymond Kuoch has stores at Toukley, The Entrance and Terrigal and says the policy is going to seriously impact his patients and essentially halve his business.
“Because of these changes I’m going to have to look at the hours I keep my pharmacies open and services I provide,” he said.
“I don’t want to be in a position of closing earlier and not being there for my patients when they need vital medicine and support.”
Kuoch said he was frustrated and surprised that a major policy was introduced without consultation with the pharmacy industry and how it would affect its viability.
“We all want to reduce the cost of living but this 60-day plan is not necessarily doing that in terms of customer benefits,” he said.
Kuoch said 60-day dispensing would make it harder for patients to reach the Medicare Safety Net threshold allowing them free PBS medicines.
He said he might be forced to charge a webster pack fee and drop free delivery to make up for the shortfall in dispensing fees and an anticipated 16 to 18 per cent reduction in his business.
“Those people who are the most vulnerable and taking a lot of medications are going to be the most affected and they’ll be paying more out-of-pocket,” he said.
“We can’t reduce the rent and one option is to look at staffing levels and it won’t be pretty; it’s going to put everyone under stress and it’s extremely worrying.
“I’m calling on Emma McBride (Member for Dobell and Assistant Minister for Rural and Regional Health) to re-think this policy and put patients first.”
McBride said on ABC radio that the 60-day dispensing policy “will mean more affordable medicines for six million Australians”.
“It is our intention that $1.2B in savings will be reinvested directly into community pharmacies in targeted programs … we want to make sure community pharmacies are thriving,” she said.
“We’ve also doubled the allowance for rural and regional pharmacies to support them during the transition.”
McBride said the government was determined to work with pharmacies to make sure they were viable and to make sure they could do more.
“With a shortage of healthcare workers around Australia, we need every healthcare worker working to the top of their full scope of practice,” McBride said.
President of the NSW Branch of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, David Heffernan, said he didn’t know how the government expected people to believe this policy wasn’t a cut to healthcare.
“We welcome common-sense health reforms, but at the same time they’re asking pharmacies to support more patients while cutting 50 per cent of their funding – it just doesn’t add up,” he said.
“Department of Health Data provided to the Guild shows clear as day that the Federal Government is not reinvesting all the money (it is) cutting.
“What this means is that pharmacists have few options: cut back on hours, staff and services, or close entirely.”
Sue Murray
nothing but more attempted scare mongering by the Pharmacy Guild.
its scare mongering at its best nothing will happen