Last Monday, we enjoyed a public holiday here in a not-so-sunny Western Australia. Around midday, our team chat started buzzing with excitement: the Eighth Community Pharmacy Agreement (8CPA) had been signed! This agreement is a significant win for the industry, and we at Peak Strategies are eager to delve into the details as they emerge. Early feedback from clients and other pharmacists has been positive, especially after the tumultuous year marked by the 60-Day Dispensing policy and the preceding challenges of COVID.
We plan to publish a blog post covering the implications of this agreement from the perspective of pharmacy business growth and accounting. A particularly valuable resource for our consulting work will be the anticipated 8CPA calculator, which will enable pharmacies to compare their remuneration for the final year of the 7CPA with the first year of the 8CPA.
Stay tuned for more updates from us. In the meantime, let's recap the key outcomes of the 8CPA, courtesy of the Pharmacy Guild website:
- Reversing the damage of 60-day dispensing through structural changes to dispensing remuneration
- $2.11 billion allocated for new fees related to 60-day dispensing
- $4.88 billion increase in total funding from the 7CPA (+22%), including a $3.94 billion boost in dispensing remuneration and a 35% increase in program funding
- Annual increases in average PBS remuneration per script throughout the 8CPA, with the dispense fee, Tier 1 AHI fee, and dangerous drug fee indexed by CPI each July
- Freezing of co-payment indexation, with patient co-payments reduced by $1 and the current $1 discount eliminated by January 2029
- Increase in the DAA base cap from 60 to 90 per week
- An additional $52 million for RPMA
Additionally, the PSA’s Strategic Agreement on Pharmacy Professional Practice has also been signed. Let’s quickly outline some of these outcomes too:
- Recognition of PSA as the peak body of pharmacists across all areas of practice in Australia
- Provision and development of Professional Practice Standards and Guidelines
- Resources and documents to support quality of service delivery and Clinical Governance Principles
- Developing a framework to demonstrate the benefits of what we do as pharmacists, which can then be used to advocate effectively for future funding
- Further developing the role of pharmacists in primary care
- Advocating that “Pharmacists can do more, but we can’t do more for less. We can do more when government supports us to do more”
Both the Pharmacy Guild and PSA have worked tirelessly over the past few months to achieve these results for pharmacies and pharmacists. A huge kudos to everyone involved—what an effort!
As we gather more data and insights from the 8CPA calculations, we will provide a detailed analysis on pharmacy accounting and valuations moving forward. Our mission is to help pharmacies achieve new heights in their business success.
Resources: https://www.guild.org.au/programs/8cpa
https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/strategic-agreement-on-pharmacist-professional-practice?language=en