Pharmacy Daily | Guild needs to address RPMA funding

PHARMACIES in "sizable regional towns" appear to be benefiting from increased funding under the new Rural Pharmacy Maintenance Allowance (RPMA) schedule at the expense of those in Australia's most remote locations, rural pharmacists believe (PD 04 Jan).

In a letter to Pharmacy Guild of Australia National President, George Tambassis, and the organisation's NSW Branch President, David Heffernan, Southern Highlands-based pharmacist, Tim Hewitt, said "it looks like funding has been taken from truly remote pharmacies in favour of increased numbers of regional pharmacies".

The incoming NSW Guild Branch Committee member said there was "growing disquiet among members adversely affected by the new RPMA schedule now based on the Modified Monash Model [of rural classification] (MMM) and its accompanying payment matrix".

"My understanding is that the MMM is a medical workforce planning tool, and as such is not designed to be applied to pharmacy or the RPMA, and therefore may be the wrong tool for the job in its current form," he said.

"Apart from the obvious question of 'how is it that the new system appears to be leaving so many (especially) remote pharmacies worse off'?, the other burning question relates to what the Guild did or did not know about the likelihood of this outcome.

"It does appear that at least anecdotally, around 60 pharmacies in NSW and perhaps 200 nationwide may be substantially worse off, and most of these are in the more remote locations.

"Further, the new MMM modelling includes many additional pharmacies that could be considered 'regional' rather than 'rural' or 'remote', and that these pharmacies, often in towns served by a number of pharmacies, will now be eligible for RPMA payments of $3,000."

Hewitt noted the RPMA was designed to support equity of access to pharmacy services in remote locations, where the viability of pharmacies was "fragile due to the small populations they serve".

"I am calling on the Guild at a National and State level to firstly acknowledge this anomaly, to gather and provide to members accurate data around the problem, and to put a plan in place to address it," he said.

Pharmacies in MMM category locations 3 to 7 can submit an exceptional circumstances request to the Federal Department of Health to review their funding under the RPMA (PD 05 Jan).