NZ to change pharmacy pay
June 26, 2012
OVER the next three years
community pharmacy in New
Zealand will transition from being
paid solely by a medicine
dispensing fee, to a patient-focused
payment mechanism.
The transition is the result of a
new Pharmacy Services Agreement
(PSA) between pharmacy owners
and their local District Health
Boards (DHBs), a program which
has been in development for the
past 18 months and included input
from DHBs and sector agents,
including the Pharmacy Guild of
New Zealand.
The NZ Guild has described the
agreement “the biggest change in
services and funding the
profession has had in over 50
years”.
The transition will commence on
01 July, and is a said to be a
“reconfiguration of services around
patients’ medicine management”.
Designed to better align the
profession more closely within the
primary health care team, the NZ
Guild said the agreement will
better utilise pharmacists as
medicines experts.
The transitional PSA includes
changes such as the
implementation (from 01 February
2013) of more structure to help
support patients with long term
conditions (LTC) to manage their
medicines; whilst LTC patients
having difficulty managing their
medicines will need to register with
a pharmacy to receive extra
support to manage their medicines.
Meanwhile there will be no
change to services for acute
patients (those who need
medicines episodically or regularly
but are able to manage their
medicines without extra help).
“The Guild supports the PSA and
the ability of all parties involved to
work together to ensure its
successful implementation,” said
NZ Guild’s Executive Chair, Karen
Crisp.
The Agreement however has not
been met with widespread
acceptance, with many community
pharmacies expressing concern
over tight timeframes and a lack of
information on the new service and
funding model.
Responding to these issues, Crisp
said “We agree that some
pharmacists have not yet got enough
information to fully understand
the Agreement and we are
working hard with the DHBs to get
this information to our members”.
As such, pharmacists have been
given three options to consider by
their DHB when signing their PSA.
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 26 Jun 12To see the full newsletter, see the embedded issue below or CLICK HERE to download Pharmacy Daily from 26 Jun 12
