James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The changes in this bill remind us that, while we rely on the PBS to provide access to increasingly complex medicines for our health, it is also important that the PBS itself undergoes continual improvement and embraces new technologies. Enabling the use of computer decision-making provides the opportunity for the PBS to move from computer assisted processing to fully automated online transactions and approvals.

The ability to obtain most PBS authority approvals online in real time will benefit every medical practice. It will allow doctors to use some of the time otherwise spent on telephone calls as additional time for caring for patients. On a similar basis, automated online processing for pharmacy claims will reduce administrative work and payment times for pharmacists.

Many organisations were consulted regarding the measures in this bill. These included pharmacy, medical consumer, pharmaceutical industry and medical software peak bodies, and I say to them: your participation in and contribution to this process has been appreciated.

The amendments proposed today will deliver efficiencies that will improve the operation of the PBS. The changes reflect the government's commitment to digital health services and to reducing red tape. The changes are necessary and practical. They will benefit prescribers and pharmacists directly and benefit patients by reducing the administrative work of doctors. The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has said that these are commonsense changes. We can only agree. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.