Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 1:54:49 to 2:01:11
Senator Gatingby inquires about the funding of Dose Administration Aids (Webster Packs) under the Support at Home program and potential cost shifts to pharmacies or individuals.
Topics: Health, Social services
Speakers: Senator Chris Gatenby, Unknown Speaker, Ms Jasmine Snow, Senator The Hon Jenny McAllister, Mr Jason Lange, Ms Sonja Stewart
Um under the former home care packages program, uh, could a participant use their package funding to pay a pharmacist for the prescription of a DAA such as a Webster PAC.
So a subset of pharmacies were covered. Yeah, okay. So under support at home, we cover support with the self-administration medication activities, so that can be arranging for the pharmacist to prepare the Webster Pack, uh, but we don't pay for the pharmacy actually preparing their DAA because that is covered under the government program. So for example, a support worker could work with the older person to arrange a phone call to organise for that DAA to be to be picked up, say next Tuesday. Um, but the actual cost of preparing the DAA would be borne by the older person. Or covered under the eighth community pharmacy agreement dose administration aid programme.
You might be able to confirm that for me. Who's paying for that now if they can't get it covered under their under the home care package? It is it is an area we where we have received some feedback and will be considered as part of our service list review. So we released a survey yesterday about the support home service list and encourage uh interested stakeholders to provide their views to us on DAAs and other elements of the programme if they haven't already done so over the previous 11 months. Do you know what kind of saving the government is making off the back of the fact that now that's been borne by either a pharmacy or an individual? Do you know what that cost is?
I don't think we categorised it as a saving throughout any of the uh documents provided to government. I understand the rationale was thinking about things that were funded by the health system as opposed to things that were funded by the age care system.
And Minister, was that decision not to cover DAAs and new system? Was that something that was taken at the government level? Was there advice from the department on that? Um if I'm a pharmacy and I'm preparing, you know, some one pharmacist came to me and said they do 200 uh DAA Webster packs, which the HCPA will far exceeds what they're allowed to do. We've got cost of living pressures out there, we've got elderly people who now are spending even more money to get medication management,
Uh obviously we may be straying into a part of policy development where I was not sworn to this portfolio and wasn't involved, so I don't know that I can add a great deal more wide to the advice that's given to you by the officials. I think as described it may be that there's been some consideration given to what part of the support to older Australians ought to be managed from within the health system and what part from within the age care system. I think the official has indicated to you that a consultation has been initiated about this uh set of issues, and it it may be that there's an opportunity for uh you and presumably the constituents. That you're speaking to to participate in that process.
Yeah, okay. I guess I'm just trying to ascertain whether this was a deliberate shift to put the cost on to uh private individuals or pharmacies away from the age care funding mechanism that there is because you know that's quite a substantial amount of money for small businesses like pharmacies to be preparing those uh DA Webster packs, or if in fact if they're then passing that on to elderly residents, that's going to be more out-of-pocket costs. And we know right at the moment that cost of living pressures are immense. We've got other policies like private health insurance rebates for older Australians. Um is this just another policy that is putting more pressure on older Australians?
That is not um the intent. As my colleague said, there's a part of um the health department that deals with these matters, and I'm sorry that we're not across that, but if we could take on notice, the extent to which um other parts of the health system uh now uh assist older people in that regard and the parts that the age care system does and get back to you on that.
Okay. That would be good. Does that mean that I can do it another outcome in the PBS area as well? Perhaps they might have more information.
Yeah, of course we could um we'll let our colleagues know.
Thank you, Chair.