Budget ensures certainty
May 12, 2010
LAST night’s Federal Budget has
finally revealed the fine details of
funding for the Fifth Community
Pharmacy Agreement, with the
Pharmacy Guild saying it has
“delivered certainty for the
pharmaceutical sector and
significant savings for taxpayers.”
As well as the Fifth Agreement,
details have been released about
the new Memorandum of
Understanding between the
government and Medicines
Australia (PD Thu) which will see
manufacturers offer savings of
$1.86 billion over five years through
expanded price disclosure (see
separate story).
The Guild said the savings
imposed through the MoU would
have a flow-on impact on
community pharmacy but that
these have already been accounted
for in the negotiation of the Fifth
Agreement - which itself delivers an
estimated $987 million in savings
to the government over 5 years.
“The Guild believes the
Agreement, although negotiated at
a time of severe fiscal restraint, has
achieved a workable balance of the
interests of consumers, taxpayers
and community pharmacy,” said
Guild President Kos Sclavos.
A major feature of the agreement
is a 32% increase in funding for
professional programs to $753m,
covering new programs such as
medication continuance, medicines
use reviews, staged supply of
medicines, PBS claiming from
nursing home medicine charts,
clinical interventions and electronic
prescriptions (PD 04 May).
The total funding allocation to
the Agreement over five years is
$15.4 billion.
The Guild said that while the MA
MoU would impose a significant
financial burden on the
pharmaceutical sector, it believes
that “most of these savings were
already included in many industry
projections.
“With Medicines Australia now
guaranteeing the equivalent of a 23
per cent price drop, greater savings
are able to be ‘booked’ by the
government,” the Guild said.
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