Pharmacy Daily | NSW hospitals under-resourced

GREATER investment needs to be made to boost hospital pharmacy departments in NSW, the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia (SHPA) believes.

In a submission to the Inquiry into health outcomes and access to health and hospital services in rural, regional and remote NSW, the SHPA called on the State Government to commit to joining the Public Hospital Pharmaceutical Reform Agreement to boost resourcing to support medication safety.

The SHPA reported that there is a higher rate of medication adverse events in NSW than other states such as Victoria and Queensland, "who have better resourced hospital pharmacy departments, who are better equipped to reduce medication related errors".

"SHPA NSW members frequently report that hospital pharmacy departments in NSW public hospitals lack the investment and resources to meet accepted standards of practice for hospital pharmacy services," the SHPA said.

"This means that the full suite of clinical pharmacy services, which reduce the incidence and severity of medication related incidents, cannot be provided to all NSW hospital patients that require it.

"These issues are exacerbated further in rural and regional NSW health services."

The SHPA called on the NSW Government to amend hospital pharmacist-to-bed ratios, to bring them into line with Victoria and Queensland, which have one pharmacist to every eight hospital beds in metro areas, compared to 1:13 in NSW.

The pharmacist-to-bed ratio in regional NSW hospitals is 1:27, while similar hospitals in Victoria have one pharmacist to every 18 beds, with Queensland having a ratio of 1:14.

"The severe inequity in access to hospital pharmacists in NSW hospitals compared to other jurisdictions contributes to the 75 medication-related incidents daily," the SHPA said.

"Poorly managed medicines can result in unintended hospital admissions, increased length of stay, poor health outcomes, re-admissions, morbidity or mortality.

"In 2017-2018, NSW patients were 48% more likely to experience an adverse effect from medicines than Victorian hospital patients, and 29% more likely to experience an adverse effect from medicines than Queensland hospital patients."