Einnahmeverluste durch fehlerhafte Abgabe und Dokumentation von verschreibungspflichtigen Arzneimitteln

Definition

Dispensing practice guidelines issued by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia set out that dispensing includes receiving prescriptions, reviewing them for validity and clinical appropriateness, entering data into dispensing software, labelling, counselling and documenting medicine‑related problems.[1] Pharmacy Board of Australia guidelines similarly require pharmacists to take reasonable steps during dispensing to ensure medicines are appropriate, that dispensing is accurate, and that necessary information is recorded.[3] State health departments emphasise that upon dispensing, pharmacists must annotate prescriptions and ensure a record of supply is made in the pharmacy electronic dispensing system, and that all poisons are correctly labelled with the patient's name, date dispensed and reference number linking to the prescription record.[2][4] In practice, manual and time‑pressured workflows lead to data entry mistakes (wrong patient, wrong prescriber, incorrect quantity, missing repeats), delays in entering emergency supplies, and inconsistent recording of professional activities such as counselling or interventions. These errors can result in: (a) rejected or clawed‑back PBS or third‑party payer claims when records do not match authority requirements, leading to unreimbursed medicine supply; (b) supply of medicines not captured in the system at all, making the script effectively unbilled; and (c) failure to bill for eligible clinical services bundled in dispensing under pharmacy remuneration rules. Logic‑based estimation: if a medium‑volume community pharmacy dispenses 60,000–80,000 prescriptions per year and even 0.3–0.5% of these (180–400 scripts) suffer from unrecoverable claim rejections or unrecorded supply at an average gross margin of AUD 15–25 per script, the pharmacy loses approximately AUD 2,700–10,000 per year. Adding 5–10 hours per month of pharmacist time correcting claims and resubmitting documentation at an effective cost of AUD 70–100 per hour adds AUD 4,200–12,000 annually. Combined, a realistic revenue‑and‑labour loss range is AUD 10,000–30,000 per year for pharmacies with manual or poorly integrated dispensing documentation processes.

Why This Matters

The Pitch: Australian retail pharmacies 🇦🇺 lose AUD 10,000–30,000 per year in unreimbursed scripts, corrected claims and unbilled professional services because of manual dispensing workflows. Automating eligibility checks, data capture and documentation at the point of dispensing closes these revenue gaps.

Affected Stakeholders

Pharmacy owner, Pharmacist in charge, Dispensing pharmacists, Claims and administration staff, Group finance managers (for multi‑store chains)

Related Business Risks