Pharmacists have warned that dose administration aid errors will continue to be made unless they are adequately paid for supplying the aids.
Following a
study showing a high error rate in the packing of dose administration aids (DAAs) provided to regional aged care facilities, pharmacists have spoken out about the pressure they are under in trying to provide the service for little or no fee.
Frustrated pharmacists have told
Pharmacy News that a heavy workload coupled with poor reimbursement imposes pressure to complete the packaging quickly, sometimes at the expense of good practice.
"Pharmacy is not charging a suitable professional fee for this practice and maybe that could be a reason why these errors are occurring, because of time pressure and constraints. People can't afford to dedicate the time to it. That's not, from a professional point of view, any sort of excuse but the time frame here is terrible," said one NSW pharmacist.
"It is intensely time-consuming to do them -- I spent an hour and a half this morning checking packs -- and if you are running a busy front of shop as well as checking dispensary scripts and you're only one pharmacist, you've got a problem. You're risking errors trying to do it on the cheap."
Anecdotal evidence suggests some pharmacists are on the brink of business failure because of providing the service for free, but are refusing to withdraw the service because they see it as a professional responsibility.
"It's not a choice; it's like dispensing a script," one rural pharmacist said.
Poor communication from GPs and aged care facility staff was another common complaint from pharmacies involved in the program. One pharmacist complained that attempting to gather information from doctors and aged care staff was as frustrating as "Chinese whispers".
PSA vice-president, Debbie Rigby, backed the authors of the study published in the Medical Journal of Australia this month, in calling for electronic communication to bypass the risk of errors that occur with communication breakdown.
"What we need to have is better IT enablement of transfer of information between GPs and pharmacists, so when a doctor does change a dose or the medication regimen, that information is transferred to the pharmacy in a timely manner. That's what we should be working on rather than suggesting the remuneration that pharmacists set in that environment is insufficient," she said.
But Ms Rigby said that since the government had agreed to fund the provision of DAAs both to communitybased patients and through the Department of Veteran Affairs to veterans, she hoped it would be extended to residents in aged care homes.
Let us know about your DAA experiences. Email Simone Roberts, Simone.Roberts@reedbusiness.com.au.