The Government has unexpectedly redirected the funding for its plan to provide on-site accredited pharmacists in residential aged care facilities. The project’s $350 million was originally set to go to aged care providers, but in a surprise announcement on 26 April 2023, the Minister for Health and Aged Care said that the project’s $350 million will now go to community pharmacists.
The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recommended that the Government should “require” aged care providers to “employ or otherwise retain” a pharmacist (Recommendation 38(b)).
Additionally, the Royal Commission recommended that pharmacists should be funded to conduct medication management reviews in aged care homes (Recommendation 64).
In response to these recommendations, the then Liberal Government committed almost $350 million to help aged care providers implement an on-site pharmacists program.
Here is what the previous Government said in their consultation paper in July 2022 (our emphasis in bold):
“The Australian Government intends to implement a new measure to embed pharmacists in residential aged care homes to improve medication management and safety. Through this new measure, aged care homes will receive Government funding to enable them to employ or engage pharmacists to:
This has now changed. Here is what the Minister for Health and Aged Care announced during a press conference on 26 April 2023:
“I want to announce a change to a program that we inherited that was announced in the latter part of the former government's tenure to improve medication compliance and medication reviews in residential aged care facilities. The policy announced by the former government would have had that program delivered through aged care facilities themselves. I am announcing today a change to that policy, so that the $350 million allocated in the Budget for that measure will instead be delivered by and through community pharmacies, again, giving those pharmacists an opportunity to show the value that they can provide to the community in delivering services rather than just processing repeat scripts.”
Most stakeholders, including the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and Aged and Community Care Providers Association (ACCPA) were surprised by the announcement (see Aged care industry in the dark over redirected on-site pharmacist funding).
At this stage, we have little guidance on why the Government made this decision, aside from what the Minister said during his speech on 26 April 2023.
The redirection of funding was only a minor point in that speech. The focus of the speech was to announce the Government’s decision to make 325 specified medicines “available for two months' supply instead of just one month”. According to the Minister, this will ensure that chronically ill people “will be able to get a supply of their medicines with only one visit to the GP per year instead of two, and only six visits to the pharmacist instead of 12”.
The Minister said that this measure will reduce inconvenience for patients and will “halve the cost of medicines for we think six million patients living with chronic disease”. Although the Minister did not say it, we can assume that if medicines become cheaper for six million people, then pharmacies will receive less income. The pharmacies would want to see this sudden reduction offset by an increase from some other source.
The Minister stressed that the savings made from the new measure would be “entirely reinvested back into community pharmacy”. He also went on to announce the redirection of $350 million from aged care providers to pharmacists.
This suggests that the $350 million was redirected to pharmacists as a means of compensating them for the reduction in income that will be caused by the Government's new medicines policy.
According to the Department of Health and Aged Care:
*This is a notable departure from the Royal Commission’s recommendation which said that providers should be required to “employ or otherwise retain” a pharmacist.