Seniors and vulnerable patients put at risk by new policy

Seniors and vulnerable patients put at risk by new policy

Province urged to cover pill pack dispensing fee

Many seniors and other patients on complex medication regimens benefit from compliance packaging from their pharmacists. Pharmacists carefully review their medications and sort them according to time of day, food interactions, and drug interactions.

The medication is then placed in daily dispensing bubble packs to be easily consumed by the patient. In some cases when medication is not taken correctly (ie non-compliance) the patients can be hospitalized or worse. The cost of hospitalization due to non-compliance is extremely expensive and traumatic.

The cost of compliance packaging and monitoring by a pharmacist is low---so why doesn't our drug czar-Helen Stephenson want to pay?. Its your health and your families health call your MPP now!





May 30, 2008 04:30 AM
Be the first to comment on this article... Linda Diebel National Affairs Writer
What makes the most sense for Ontario taxpayers: allowing druggists to dispense medication to people in pill packs when required, or sending them off to nursing homes because they can't always keep their medication straight?
That's the essential question for Susan Eng, vice-president for advocacy of the Canadian Association for Retired Persons (CARP), with its 400,000 members nationwide, two-thirds of them in Ontario.
For her, it's a no-brainer.
CARP has urged Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman's department not to impose regulations that would make it difficult – even impossible – for pharmacists to charge the $3 billion Ontario Drug Benefit Program, which covers seniors, for dispensing pill packs.
These little plastic boxes – known as "bubble" or "compliance" packs – can be critical for elderly or disabled people.
They're filled by druggists who place a required number of pills in daily or weekly compartments for the patient, who then doesn't have to calculate his/her own dosage from individual bottles.
However, the province has called for public submissions by today for a series of regulatory changes, including the handling of pill packs. At question, is whether they will be covered under the drug plan and what restrictions, if any, will apply.
"CARP believes that continued and better access to compliance packs will assist people to remain independent and safe in their homes by reducing the threat of medication error," Eng wrote yesterday, in a letter to the ministry co-signed by director Holly Vengroff.
"Continued funding of the dispensing fees for such services to Ontario seniors should be a vital part of Ontario's aging (at) home strategy. The benefit and protection afforded by this measure would far exceed the cost."
Eng says she's concerned the alternative – if pill packs weren't covered – would be growing numbers of patients in nursing homes, where pill packs are commonly used, and soaring costs.
Dispensing in pill packs isn't actually now covered under the Ontario Drug Benefit Program, but the province didn't appear to have made an issue of it until a recent controversy with Toronto pharmacist Chaim Wrightman. He took the ministry to Superior Court after he was excluded from the Ontario Drug Benefit Program.
Wrightman's problems began with a dispute over billing for pill pack dispensing fees.
According to his lawyers, his removal from the program would render his business insolvent.
The case has been stayed.
A ministry spokesperson said no decision will be made until all submissions have been studied