Concern for providers over medication management
Australian aged care providers are demanding action from the Department of Health and the Pharmacy Guild to ensure no older Australian be denied a medication management service if it is ‘clinically warranted’.
Patrick Reid is LASA's chief executive and a registered pharmacist.
The call for action came from Leading Age Services Australia (LASA), an industry body committed to improved standards, equality and efficiency in the sector, after recent changes to Home Medicine Reviews (HMR) and Residential Medication Management Reviews (RMMR), including caps on services for community providers and exclusion periods for all services.
HMR and RMMR are for those at risk of serious medication misadventure, which can result in avoidable hospitalisation and poorer health outcomes.
Patrick Reid, LASA chief executive and registered pharmacist, especially expressed concern for rural, regional and remote (RRR) aged care providers.
“These providers already have issues with obtaining professional services, and these arbitrary caps in community and exclusion periods for both community/residential may further impact the provision of services if RRR services are not flexible in these regions,” Mr Reid said.
He claimed the Pharmacy Guild and Department of Health's failure to contact LASA to discuss the changes showed a continued ‘inward focus’ by these bodies, without reference to the one million or more people receiving care and services in the community who are at risk of medication misadventure.
“Although cited as ‘budgetary measures’, LASA understands a small number of providers of medication management services have been rorting the system – short changing the medical and pharmacy professions and patients by claiming for large volumes of services.”
Mr Reid lastly called for both the Department of Health and Medicare to ensure probity checks were undertaken and prosecutions made to preserve the sanctity of the process, and to “not punish the good providers unnecessarily”.
“Both community and residential age service providers work hand in glove with GPs and pharmacists to support these services and do not want to see older Australians put at risk for the sake of a tiny cohort of unscrupulous operators.”
