September 2016

For Western Australian Hospital Sites ONLY - The S8 reporting functionality has been modified to allow sites to exclude S8 items charged to the hospital.

When generating the S8 report, the Prescription Data Extraction screen now includes a new option: Exclude Hospital Charged Items?

This feature is relevant for Western Australia Hospital Sites ONLY.

For sites located outside WA, the layout Prescription Data Extraction screen has been slightly modified, but existing functionality remains unchanged.

This feature will be released separately to participating sites on 3 September 2016. This feature will be included in the general release on 1 October 2016.

Overview

The Chemotherapy Compounding Payment Scheme (CCPS) is the payment mechanism for the Chemotherapy measure arising from the Sixth Community Pharmacy Agreement (6CPA). The measure has been designed to reform remuneration arrangements for chemotherapy compounders for chemotherapy infusions prepared under the special arrangements of section 100 of the National Health Act 1953.

This measure revises the previous payment structure and implements a two-tiered fee to recognise Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)-licensed compounders.

The two-tiered fee structure to be implemented comprises:

• A $60 “per infusion” fee for compounders who are licensed by the TGA.
• A lower “per infusion” fee of $40 for other compounders not licensed by the TGA, including pharmacies and hospitals which compound in-house.

These fees will be paid through the following arrangements:

• Pharmacists with Efficient Funding of Chemotherapy (EFC) claims will be paid a $40 compounding fee for each valid claim through the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme (PBS).
• TGA licensed compounders will be directly paid an extra $20 for each valid PBS claim through the CCPS Administration Agency.

Changes to PBS Online for items on the EFC schedule will be introduced from 1 September 2016 to record for each EFC Item claimed:

• The identity of the compounder
• The infusion identifier generated internally by the dispensing software.

For these items, this data will be available to the CCPS Administration Agency to facilitate payments to TGA licensed compounders and to better understand the scope of chemotherapy compounding in Australia.

Pharmacy Default Compounder

In the Owner Details screen, the Pharmacy may select a preferred compounder. This compounder is used as a “default” for all Chemotherapy scripts.

This default can be changed at any time. It can also be overridden at script level when dispensing.

Press <CTRL + L> to display a list of compounders available for selection.

Compounder selection is not mandatory. It will become mandatory in March 2017 and Fred Dispense will perform the appropriate validation checks.

Dispensing a Chemotherapy Script

• The screen displays the currently selected compounder.
• Orange denotes that the compounder is not licensed.
• The script is for multiple infusion items.
• The infusion group ID is also displayed.

For the primary infusion item, the compounder field defaults to the compounder selected in Owner Details screen. This selection will persists through all subsequent infusion items.

Dispensing additional items to the same infusion

The Pharmacist can (where applicable) opt to add ingredients to the Chemotherapy infusion.

For payment purpose, all items are assigned to the same Infusion ID.

The button + Add Ingredients is only displayed when dispensing Chemotherapy items.

One or more non-Chemotherapy items may be added to the infusion under the same Infusion ID, as long as the addition is performed on the primary Chemotherapy item. All multiple infusions must begin with a Chemotherapy item and must be selected when adding standard items.

Chemo script screen notations

Extra user notification is displayed when + Add Ingredients is used:

For new multiple infusions

For editing multiple infusions

An issue that caused S8 reports to display incorrect address details for casual prescribers has now been corrected.

An error that resulted in a red error message when dispensing, then discounting an Extemp has now been resolved.

All drug information is now defaulted to valid values when discounting.

The generation of Data Matrix barcodes has been supressed for ALL Owing type scripts.

The PBS Online URLs used by Fred Connect during transmission have been updated to match recent changes to the Medicare Australia web service.