June 2025
News
In this issue
| Coming Soon...Your Fred Virtual Assistant |
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| What's New in Fred Dispense |
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| Upgrade to a modern Windows 11 device before EOFY |
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| Update to Continued Dispensing Arrangements – Emergency Measures |
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| Changes in Cautionary Ancillary Labels |
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| End of financial year and stocktaking help |
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| This Month's PBS Changes |
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| Running the monthly update for Fred Dispense |
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Coming Soon...Your Fred Virtual Assistant
We are thrilled to announce a significant enhancement to your customer service experience. Starting 3 June 2025, we will be replacing our live chat service with a new, advanced messaging chatbot.
Why the Change?
Our new messaging chatbot is designed to provide you with faster, more efficient, and round-the-clock support. This upgrade will be:
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Convenient: Access support anytime, anywhere, even outside of regular business hours.
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Fast: Get immediate answers to your queries without waiting in a queue.
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Personalised: Benefit from help tailored to your needs or routing to the correct support team.
Visit the Fred Help Portal from 3 June to start using the chatbot.
What's New in Fred Dispense
Blank DD Dispensing Changes for RTPM
The behaviour has changed for dispensing of Blank DD (Dangerous Drug) scripts. The prompts to enter Generic Name, Drug Strength, and Drug Form are now mandatory. You will not be able to proceed with the script without providing the required information.
For example, when prompted for the Drug Generic Name, you cannot proceed without entering text in the popup.
If you try to do so, you will see the following blue message:
Similar messages display for the prompts for Drug Strength and Drug Form.
ACT Date of Birth Prompt for All Prescriptions
From 13 June 2025, all ACT pharmacies will be required to record the Date of Birth for all prescriptions.
For example, here is a prescription for Noten being dispensed on 13 June 2025. The Patient DOB prompt displays.
If you try to bypass this prompt, you will see the following:
Upgrade to a modern Windows 11 device before EOFY
With Windows 10 support ending later this year, now is the ideal time to transition to modern Windows 11 devices. If your pharmacy’s PCs are over three years old and out of warranty, upgrading will ensure optimal security and reliability.
Fred has all the hardware solutions you need, ready for delivery before June 30. Please consult your accountant about any potential tax incentives available with the instant asset write-off .
To further discuss the upgrade options for your pharmacy please contact your local Fred representative or email sales@fred.com.au.
Update to Continued Dispensing Arrangements – Emergency Measures
From 23 May 2025 to 30 June 2025, a temporary PBS Continued Dispensing Emergency Measure has been put in place to support people affected by the flooding disaster in New South Wales to continue to access their PBS subsidised medicines.
This PBS Continued Dispensing Emergency Measure will support access to a wider range of PBS medicines than under ongoing Continued Dispensing arrangements, covering most medicines on the General Schedule of the PBS. For further information, please see the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme Continued Dispensing Arrangements webpage.
The 1 June 2025 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 and enter A2025CD in the streamlined code/phone approval number field.
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.
Changes in Cautionary Ancillary Labels
The Pharmaceutical Society Australia has made some revisions to cautionary ancillary labels.
CAL Label 18 and CAL I have been merged, and an updated CAL 18 has been introduced.
| Old CAL 18 and CAL I | Revised CAL 18 |
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CAL 13 has been reworded.
| Old CAL 13 | New CAL 13 |
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These changes will be applied in Fred Dispense warnings and sigs from the June 2025 update. For further information, please see the below:
https://www.australianpharmacist.com.au/goodbye-cal-i-hello-expanded-cal-18/
https://www.australianpharmacist.com.au/new-cal-medicine-storage-guidance/
End of financial year and stocktaking help
It's nearly time for End of Financial Year Reporting and Stocktaking. To assist you with these processes, refer to the following Fred Office Plus resources:
Important reminder for department stocktakes
If you plan to do a department stocktake, make sure that all product items are assigned to a department. Otherwise, items will be missing from your stock count.
How to make sure items are assigned to departments in Fred Office Plus
- Select Reporting > Inventory Reports > Item Pricing Details.
- Click Open Report.
- Select the No Department checkbox and then click Run Report.
- For each product item in the list, assign it to a department:
- Double click an item to display the stock card.
- Select a Department.
- Click Save and Close.
As a shortcut, you can do this in bulk using the Quick Action Wizard. Select multiple lines, then right-click, select Perform Quick Action and then follow the steps in the Wizard.
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.
For Highly Specialised Drugs (HSD) items (CAR and non-CAR), please refer to the Schedule of Pharmaceutical Benefits as well as Services Australia to confirm whether the PBS item code for a HSD is eligible to be dispensed and claimed by your pharmacy type.