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7 September 2026: A new review by University of Canberra researchers has found the government could save hundreds of millions of dollars each year by using pharmacists to reduce hospital admissions from medicine-related harm.
The Faculty of Health’s Associate Professor Itismita Mohanty, a health economist, and Professor Theo Niyonsenga, a biostatistician, carried out the study for the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA), to quantify the potential savings of pharmacist-led post-discharge interventions, including Home Medicines Reviews (HMR).
In 2019, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) declared the Quality Use of Medicines and Medicines Safety the 10th National Health Priority Area. That came after a report by the University of South Australia (UniSA) found medicine-related harm drives 650,000 hospital and emergency department visits each year, half of which were avoidable.
At the time, it was estimated to cost $1.4 billion annually, but University of Canberra researchers say that cost today would be more like $2.1 billion.
“Our analysis applied 2022-23 National Hospital Cost Data to estimates from the UniSA study and found that number of medication-related hospitalisations and emergency department presentations would cost approximately $1.75-$2.53 billion, of which $700 million-$1 billion may be preventable,” Professor Mohanty said.
Incorporating findings from the 2021 Queensland REMAIN HOME trial, which evaluated the impact of integrating pharmacists into general practices to support patients following hospital discharge, the research estimated that pharmacist-led interventions could reduce the burden of unplanned hospital re-admissions by between $140 million and $315 million annually.
“This is the conservative estimate,” Professor Mohanty said. “We are only able to estimate the emergency department presentations and the hospital admissions costs, we are not able to capture all of the costs.
“But these findings highlight the substantial clinical and economic benefits of pharmacist-led interventions, with the potential to improve patient outcomes while delivering significant healthcare system savings."
Lost productivity is one cost that wasn’t built into the calculation, but Professor Mohanty said there were other costs that weren’t quantified, including those associated with long-term morbidity and primary care – and even non-harm-related economic elements, such as the value of unused medications sitting in people’s cupboards.
The PSA President, University of Canberra Professor Mark Naunton – who recused himself from PSA’s commissioning process – said despite medicine safety’s status as a health priority area, little has been done to address the issue in the years since.
“It's great having research showing there's problems with medicines, but at the end of the day, unless you're actually doing something about it and you ensure patients can access it, then people are being harmed,” he said.
“We've had one evidence-based program shown to improve medicine safety, which was the on-site aged care pharmacist program that commenced in 2024, and for me, that's simply not good enough. We know more can be done.”
Home Medicine Reviews happen upon GP referrals and involve pharmacists sitting down with patients – who can be on dozens of medications – to go through their medicines to make recommendations to their GP and formulate a plan to start, stop, increase or decrease a medicine.
Professor Naunton says these discussions are about ensuring patients get the best use out of their medicines with the least amount of harm, but he says sitting down and having a conversation can also provide necessary education or identify other issues.
“Some people become non-adherent to taking their medicines, and it might be just trying to educate them why that medicine is important and how it might help them. Sometimes doctors don't know why the patient's not responding to a medicine, and it can simply come down to the fact they're not taking it – but they feel they're letting their health care provider down, so they don't tell their doctor they're not taking it.
“Sometimes people don't even get the prescription filled when the doctor gives it to them, and then some get it filled and then don't take it. Some get it filled, get it dispensed, take some, and then stop. Some people get confused and double up on some medicines.”
HMRs have been publicly funded since 2001, but pharmacists are limited to only doing 30 per month, something the PSA is seeking to change.
“You wouldn't go to your doctor and say ‘can I have an appointment?’ and they go, ‘no, I've seen 30 patients this month. See you later’,” Professor Naunton said.
“So that's what we're working with government on at the moment and I have to say, these are all positive discussions.”
