REST-HOME HOSPITALS 'COULD BECOME TARGETS'

Drug addicts could start breaking into rest-home hospitals if they have to
store three months medication for residents, a Mosgiel residential care
centre managing director fears.

Drug addicts could view rest-homes as "mini-pharmacies" if they had to
store so much medication instead of getting it delivered weekly, Birchleigh
Residential Care Centre managing director Peter White, of Mosgiel, said
when approached.

Government drug funding agency Pharmac is proposing most people get
prescription medicine in three-monthly lots rather than monthly.

Mr White said Birchleigh had about 70 to 75 people on medication and each
of them took an average of about eight drugs.

A Mosgiel pharmacy delivered the monthly prescriptions in weekly batches,
in individual trays which separated medications into days and times they
should be taken.

Under the proposed change, the pharmacy would have to boost the charge for
that service by about $19,000 a year, from about $7000. The pharmacy would
be paid one dispensing fee every three months by the Otago District Health
Board instead of monthly fees.

Birchleigh would find it difficult to pay the extra cost because even the
Government acknowledged rest-home hospitals were already underfunded, he said.

But if Birchleigh did not pay, it would get three months' supply of drugs
for each patient simultaneously in boxes and bottles.

It was best to dispense drugs weekly because older people often got
infections in winter and had short-term drugs added to their regime, Mr
White said.

Birchleigh has up to 79 residents in a rest-home, hospital and dementia wing.

Residential Care New Zealand executive director Petrina Turner, of
Wellington, said pharmacists believed they would have to charge $250-$300
per resident annually to put drugs in trays under three-monthly prescribing.

Given there were about 21,000 beds in rest-home hospitals around the
country, that would boost their costs by about $6 million nationwide.

Many rest-home hospitals would have to create secure areas if drugs were
delivered three-monthly, when they already had a general lack of storage space.

Residential Care New Zealand represented rest-home hospitals with about
17,000 beds, Ms Turner said.