Tuesday, 2 May 2023

Hospital pharmacists

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (17:52): (166) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Health, and it is in relation to appropriate funding for hospital pharmacists. I have received a letter from the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia, who have also written to the minister requesting that in the upcoming state budget they are funded appropriately. They have, like many behind the scenes in hospitals, done a tremendous job throughout COVID-19 dealing with the health crisis and being able to manage very complex patients and very ill patients, as they do – and they do an extraordinary job. They have highlighted in this letter exactly what they have done over the past few years, which I will not go into in great detail.

The issue is that they have been told that Victoria will get 200 additional FTE public sector pharmacists that will be employed through the public hospital pharmacy departments – and that is expected to occur. However, there is no certainty about funding, and they have been told that it will have to come out of existing hospital resourcing. In the letter it says:

Victorian SHPA members have expressed disappointment that they have been advised their hospital’s allocations are to be funded within existing funding parameters, which is deeply unfair and impractical as this will only lead to cuts in other areas of the hospital pharmacy department or other hospital departments that ultimately impact patient service delivery.

Further, this lack of dedicated funding for the 200 FTE pharmacists has caused confusions and delays to recruitment, with some pharmacy departments being instructed to advertise positions despite no funding, and other pharmacy departments are being told by their health services they aren’t allowed to advertise positions amidst lack of funding and funding uncertainty.

You can see the dilemma here – that even though they have been told that they need to meet these ratios and that an additional 200 pharmacists will be required, there is no funding to employ these pharmacists to be able to meet the demands of the government, and that was agreed through the enterprise bargaining agreement process. So the action I seek is for the government to commit in this year’s budget the funding for hospital pharmacists which is needed to provide that certainty and ensure that the essential services that hospital pharmacists provide are not compromised.