Page 6 - Federal Budget Submission 2016-17

Medicines use in Australia
Drug utilisation data indicates that prescription medication use in Australia is steadily increasing.13 Over 80% of Australians aged 65 years and over, and 70% of Australians aged 45-64 regularly use pharmaceuticals, with these proportions expected to further increase.14
Medicines are the most common treatment used in health care and contribute to significant improvements in health when used appropriately. Australia spends over $16 billion on medicines every year.16 By comparison, very little is spent on medication safety and not enough attention is given to reducing the occurrence and severity of medication errors.
All medicines have the potential for side effects and can interact with other medicines. Each year 230,000 people are admitted to hospital, and many more people experience reduced quality of life, as a result of side effects of their medicines. This comes at a cost to the system of more than $1.2 billion.17 The COAG Reform Council’s report also documented increases in potentially preventable hospital admissions.18
Much of this personal and financial burden is preventable, with increasing evidence of the impact that pharmacists can have on medication safety and adherence, and the resulting savings to the health system.20,21
20-30%
Medication-related admissions account for 20-30% of all hospital admissions for people over 6519
Two-thirds of Australians over 75 are on 5 or more medicines15
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders continue to experience worse health
2/3
It is not only ageing Australians with increasing co-morbidities who will continue to be exposed to the risk of medication misadventure unless improved multi-disciplinary systems and process are developed, evaluated, implemented and integrated across health care settings.22
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have two-to-three times higher levels of illness than non-Indigenous Australians. 23
This is a key area of policy focus for the Government, who have indicated their commitment to achieving health equality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation.25
Together with changes to lifestyle factors, long term medicine treatment is usually needed to prevent or reduce disease progression and thereby minimise or delay negative outcomes of ill health. Despite the high burden of chronic disease, under-use of medicines amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people persists, due to a range of factors.26
Without improved medicine information and increased medicine adherence, it is likely that chronic disease for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will remain poorly controlled and morbidity and mortality rates will remain high.
80%
80% of the 10-12 year life-expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians can be attributed to chronic diseases such as heart disease (22%), diabetes (12%) and liver disease (11%)24
6 Federal Budget Submission 2016-17 I ©Pharmaceutical Society of Australia Ltd.