Mon 1 September 2025

Policy and Advocacy impact: August 2025

This month, AdPha’s policy and advocacy team have been hard at work conducting a series of roundtables with jurisdictional, medical, consumer and rural health stakeholders, as well as several AdPha Leadership Committees.

The roundtables related to the Pharmaceutical Reform Agreements and how access to PBS medicines in hospitals can be improved. They will provide a briefing with recommendations to government as National Health Reform Agreement for hospital funding recommences soon. 

Pharmacists prescribing and scope of practice

AdPha President Tom Simpson FANZCAP (Lead&Mgmt.), Chief Executive Kristin Michaels FAICD and Head of Policy and Advocacy Jerry Yik FANZCAP (Lead&Mgmt., PublicHlth) met with Minister Butler and his advisers to discuss pharmacists prescribing and scope of practice where we are reiterating the need for PBS prescribing to be enabled in collaborative prescribing.

The team also received an update on the Pharmacy Programs Agreement and discussed the role of the TGA with the current gaps in medicines shortages management.

TGA consultation 

The Therapeutic Goods Administration commenced a consultation on reforms to medicinal cannabis, with AdPha attending a stakeholder roundtable on the consultation. The TGA advised they are aiming to address safety risks with THC-containing medicinal cannabis products, and the large number of patients being prescribed medicinal cannabis through SAS and Authorised Prescriber (AP) schemes. The number of SAS B applications for medicinal cannabis is likely to be about 200,000 this calendar year.