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• Indigenous Chronic
  Disease Package
• Tackling Chronic Disease
  Risk Factors
  • National action to reduce Indigenous smoking rate
  • Helping Indigenous Australians to reduce their risk of chronic disease
  • Local Indigenous community campaigns to promote better health
• Improving Chronic Disease
  Management and Follow up
  • Subsidising PBS medicine co-payments
  • Higher utilisation costs for MBS and PBS
  • Supporting primary care providers to coordinate chronic disease management
  • Improving Indigenous participation in health care through chronic disease self management
  • Increasing specialist and allied health follow up care
  • Monitoring and evaluation
• Workforce Expansion,
  Training and Support
  • Workforce education and training
  • Expanding the outreach and service capacity of Indigenous health services
  • Engaging Medicare Locals to improve Indigenous Access to mainstream primary care
  • Attracting more people to work in Indigenous Health
  • Clinical practice and decision support

Indigenous Chronic Disease Package

Registering your eligible patients for the PBS Co-payment measure

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As part of the Indigenous Chronic Disease Package, accredited practices/services and those working towards accreditation, can prescribe more affordable PBS medicines for eligible Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander patients with, or at risk of, chronic disease who meet the measure’s needs-based criteria.

To participate in this initiative, general practices will need to be registered for the PIP Indigenous
Health Incentive.

Non-remote Indigenous Health Services are eligible to participate in the PBS Co-payment measure without being required to participate in the PIP Indigenous Health Incentive. Indigenous Health Services not participating in the PIP Indigenous Health Incentive but still wishing to assist their eligible patients with the cost of PBS medicines can complete the Indigenous Health Service Application to Participate in the PBS Co-payment measure application form available at the following website http://www.health.gov.au/internet/ctg/publishing.nsf/Content/subsidising-pbs-medicine-co-payments. The Department of Health and Ageing will assess these applications and notify the Indigenous Health Service in writing whether or not their application has been successful. Patients cannot be registered for the PBS Co-payment measure until the Indigenous Health Service has received notification that they have registered for the measure.

Benefit to the patient

When obtaining PBS medicines at their local pharmacy, eligible patients who would normally pay the full PBS co-payment ($33.30 per item as at 1 July 2010) will pay the concessional rate ($5.40 per item as at 1 July 2010). Those who would normally pay the concessional price will receive their PBS medicines without being required to pay a PBS co-payment. However, premiums for a small number of medicines will still need to be paid by the patient.

Community pharmacists will be reimbursed for the proportion of the normal PBS co-payment that has not been paid by the patient.

Patient eligibility criteria

The benefit is available to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people of any age who present with, or are at risk of, chronic disease, and in the opinion of the prescriber:

• would experience setbacks in the prevention or ongoing management of chronic disease if the person did not take the prescribed medicine; and
• are unlikely to adhere to their medicines regimen without assistance through the measure.

For further information about assessing these criteria, see Detail Card #9 on this measure.

To register an individual patient for the PBS Co-payment measure

Check your patient’s eligibility and gain the patient’s signed consent.
General practices and Indigenous Health Services that are eligible for the PIP Indigenous Health Incentive may obtain the relevant patient consent forms from the Medicare website at:
http://www.medicareaustralia.gov.au/provider/incentives/pip/forms-guides.jsp

If you are an Indigenous Health Service not eligible for the PIP Indigenous Health Incentive, you will need to obtain separate PBS Co-payment measure forms from the ICDP website located at: http://www.health.gov.au/internet/ctg/publishing.nsf/Content/non-pip-participants

Once a patient is registered, participating GPs will need to annotate the prescriptions of registered patients to indicate that they are eligible to receive co-payment relief. All PBS medicines are covered under the measure whether or not the medicines are being used to treat chronic or acute medical conditions. The cost of filling dose administration aids such as webster packs is a service fee that is negotiated between the individual patient and pharmacist and is not covered under the PBS measure. The measure only relates to the cost of the PBS medicines that the patient receives.

If your prescribing software has not been upgraded to automatically annotate prescriptions for registered patients, you can manually annotate prescriptions by writing the letters ‘CTG’ and your initials or signature next to the annotation (Refer to the sample diagram shown below). You will need to print the annotation at the top of the prescription or on the right hand side of the prescription to the right of the patient’s name and address area.

Upon presenting a correctly annotated prescription to a pharmacy for dispensing, your patient will be supplied the medicine at the reduced rate.

For information about the PBS Co-payment measure go to:
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/ctg/publishing.nsf/Content/subsidising-pbsmedicine-co-payments

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Page currency, Latest update: 09 December, 2010

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