News: SIG Australia's Sigma Healthcare loses pharma contract to NZ's EBOS, page-24

It's not a racket Gilly it is all about patient safety. Bringing their medication in to hospital with them or at least an up to date list verified by their doctor or pharmacy ensures the patients medication history is recorded correctly so the hospital doctors know exactly what they are dealing with. Often after an admission, medications are changed or doses altered and sending a patient home with their old medications is fraught with dangers.

While in hospital they are supplied with medication from the hospital pharmacy (at no extra cost and some of the initial treatments given can be very expensive) they are supplied with discharge medications - enough to have time to make contact with their doctor / pharmacy to get ongoing supplies.

The small cost associated with the discarding of old medications is a small cost to pay for ongoing safety. Having said that if you could rely on all patients to discard their old redundant medications then this would not be an issue.

A hospital admission apart from perhaps some surgical admissions is an excellent opportunity for review of a patients drug regimens (particularly for the elderly where confusion is an issue). All hospital doctors, nursing staff, pharmacy staff, their GPs and community pharmacists are all acting in their best interest. When Myhealthrecord finally gets into full swing soon Hospital doctors will be able to write up a patients medication history from this but they will probably want to still check physically their medication packs as well as I can relate to some astonishing practices patients have with their own medicines.

It is all about safe practices and you have to have a standard procedure for all irrespective of the type or length of admisssion. It is not a rort as you see it.