April 2020
News
In this issue
| Late Changes: Emergency Telephone Authority Approvals During COVID-19 Pandemic |
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| Important Update to Newsletter: Fluad Quad Vaccine not in Fred Dispense Drug File |
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| Fred’s business continuation and response to COVID-19 |
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| Emergency Arrangements for Patients Affected by Bushfires and COVID-19 |
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| Adding Own Brand Drugs to Fred Dispense |
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| SafeScript and Fred Dispense for Victorian Pharmacies |
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| Introducing MedView Flow |
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| APP Online |
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| Watch out for COVID-19 phishing attempts |
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| This Month's PBS Changes |
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Late Changes: Emergency Telephone Authority Approvals During COVID-19 Pandemic
Temporary changes have been made to the emergency telephone authority approvals to cope with the increased demand. Where a prescriber is writing a prescription which requires a telephone approval authority, including for increased PBS quantities or repeats, and the authority line is unavailable, the prescriber will be diverted to a recorded message advising that the prescription is to be annotated with an authority approval number of E2020CV.
Phone authority item prescriptions, written from 1 April to the end of the Covid-19 period, that are endorsed with E2020CV should be dispensed as usual, however you must fill in authority details as shown below. At the completion of dispensing, PBS Online will then return one of two warnings—either 150 or 151—which can be ignored.
Prescriptions written prior to or after the COVID-19 period—that is, before 1 April 2020—with the standard emergency authority approval message should be dispensed using the current emergency approval process of ticking the Emergency Provision (P9999Rx) checkbox in which the dispensing software automatically includes "P9999RX" in the Enter Phone Approval No field.
Important Update to Newsletter: Fluad Quad Vaccine not in Fred Dispense Drug File
The Fluad Quad vaccine is available as immunisation against influenza in persons 65 years of age and older. Fred IT Group sought to include this vaccine in the April 2020 drug file, but the information was not provided.
In order to dispense the Fluad Quad vaccine you can:
- Use Question Mark Dispensing, if applicable
- Add as an Own Brand Drug
See Nine News article Flu vaccines designed for the elderly for more information about the Fluad Quad Vaccine.
Fred’s business continuation and response to COVID-19
On 18 March the following email was sent to our customers detailing our business continuation and response to the unfolding COVID-19 situation: ‘A Message from Paul Naismith, CEO Fred IT Group’. The safety of our team and the continuity of our operations remains our highest priority, and we recognise how important access to healthcare services during this period are. We will continue to review and assess the situation and will keep you informed of any updates.
Emergency Arrangements for Patients Affected by Bushfires and COVID-19
On 10 January 2020 the Health Minister made an announcement to ensure that patients affected by the bushfires will be able to access their regular medications under the PBS, conditional upon changes to state legislation.
Effective Monday 13 Jan 2020 the Department of Health have expanded the list of PBS drugs that can be supplied via continued dispensing provisions.
The Government has now made a decision to extend the expanded Continuing Dispensing Emergency measure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The measure will continue until 30 June 2020.
- The expanded list includes all Section 85 PBS authority and non-authority items
- This applies to most medicines generally supplied by community pharmacies
- S100 items are NOT to be supplied under these arrangements.
- The normal Continued Dispensing PBS rules apply
The April Fred Dispense drug file has been updated with the expanded list. When dispensing eligible authority items, please remember to use 123 as the authority number.
For continued dispensing related queries please refer to the link above. If you have any other questions, refer to Dispense a Continued Dispensing Supply or contact Fred Help.
Adding Own Brand Drugs to Fred Dispense
The Own Brand Drug file is a limitless database where you can store and maintain a list of private items that you regularly dispense, but are not included or maintained in the Monthly Fred Dispense Drug Update.
Drugs that are set up in the Own Brand Drug file appear along with other drugs when searched. They are flagged as PRIVATE within the drug selection screen.
For details, see Add an Own Brand Drug.
Own Brand items can only be dispensed as Private.
SafeScript and Fred Dispense for Victorian Pharmacies
SafeScript real-time prescription monitoring system is already saving lives and keeping patients with prescription medication addictions safe from harm.
From April 2020, it will be mandatory to check SafeScript prior to writing or dispensing a prescription for a medicine monitored through the system. For more information, refer to SafeScript on the health.vic website.
Get Started with SafeScript
1. Register
Victorian pharmacies wishing to use SafeScript must first register with the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services
2. Activate
For any Victorian sites that have not yet turned on SafeScript, when you run the April Fred Dispense program update, SafeScript will be automatically activated, Once you have run this, you will begin seeing pre-check alerts for monitored drugs.
3. Dispense
- When you dispense S8 or Victorian monitored drugs, you must enter the patient's Date of Birth.
- SafeScript returns a notification when you navigate to the Pharmacist initials field.
For more information, refer to SafeScript in Fred Dispense.
SafeScript and Fred Dispense in Victorian Hospitals
In preparation for state wide rollout, Victorian pharmacies providing services to hospitals (specifically inpatient) will be able to flag a script as being dispensed as an inpatient script with the keyboard shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+I. See Dispense a script for an inpatient for more details.
This information is important for future rules to be implemented in SafeScript. All monitored drug dispensing history is forwarded to SafeScript with this inpatient information included.
Introducing MedView Flow
eRx Script Exchange is launching a new workflow tool to help pharmacies manage the dispensing changes which will occur with the introduction of electronic prescribing in Australia in 2020. MedView Flow addresses this problem by bringing paper-based and electronic scripts into the one electronic workflow (or queue).
APP Online
On Thursday 19 March 20 we participated in the APP Online program where we conducted a number of virtual sessions on ePrescriptions. These sessions were recorded and are now available for all registered APP2020 delegates to watch on demand at https://www.appconference.com/apponline.
19th March
Room A: Business, Innovation & Leadership Stream
| 1.30-2.00pm | ‘Real time monitoring’, Paul Naismith |
| 2.15-3.00pm | ‘What are ePrescriptions and what do they mean to me?’, Paul Naismith and Danielle Bancroft |
| 3.15-4.00pm | ‘Electronic prescriptions – changes to patient engagement with the pharmacist and pharmacy workflow’, Paul Naismith |
Watch out for COVID-19 phishing attempts
Cyber criminals have seized upon COVID-19 as an opportunity to send fake communications purporting to be from the World Health Organisation and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. Can you spot a fake email?
This Month's PBS Changes
For the full Schedule of Pharmaceutical Benefits, go to the PBS website at http://www.pbs.gov.au/ where you can search the schedule by drug name.
For your convenience, we've also uploaded a printable summary of this month's important PBS changes to this site:
Please note that the Government provides this information under embargo to Fred IT Group to enable next month’s PBS changes to be incorporated into your drug file. We have provided this information in this newsletter to prepare you for the changes, maximising patient availability/access and enabling you to adjust your stock accordingly. A condition of the embargo and in the interests of the quality use of medicines is that the information must not be released to the public or otherwise distributed prior to 1 April 2020.