THE Health Department's latest PBS Expenditure and Prescriptions Report shows that pharmacy remuneration in 2016-17 was $2.42 billion, nearly $400m less than the Department estimated at the time of the signing of the Sixth Community Pharmacy Agreement (6CPA) in May 2015, according to Pharmacy Guild of Australia executive director David Quilty.
Writing in Forefront yesterday, Quilty said this figure was "close to double the $200m increase in the administration, handling and infrastructure (AHI) fee that will be paid to community pharmacies over the last three years of the 6CPA as a result of the negotiation of the Pharmacy Compact."
"This deficit for pharmacies - which is a windfall for the Federal Government -- is as a result of the combination of lower than anticipated PBS prescription volumes and the ongoing impact of PBS reforms on the average per script pharmacy gross profit for dispensing medicines."
More alarmingly, the percentage of PBS payments to community pharmacy have fallen from 93% in 2011-12 to 77% in 2016-17, while the percentage going to public hospitals has increased from 5% to 19%...," he wrote.
In addition, the percentage of community pharmacies PBS costs are doing all the "heavy lifting" as the scheme focuses on subsidising lower volume, higher cost new medicines dispensed primarily through hospitals, while lower cost higher volume generics are growing in community pharmacy.
Quilty also drew a "stark contrast" between the PBS as a "fiscal master class" and the MBS, public hospitals and aged care funding growth rates higher than both CPI and GDP.
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