PATIENTS WHO RECEIVE their medication in blister packs could have to pay up to €50 per month for them from next year after the Dáil heard that the State will no longer fund them. 

Blister packs – or ‘monitored dosing systems’ – enable people to take their medication according to the prescribed dose schedule. They typically hold a day’s medication under a bubble, with other bubbles holding tablets for different days. 

The HSE said they can “support patients prescribed certain high-risk medications, who are at risk of medication misadventure when these medications are supplied in the typical monthly instalments”. 

Last week, Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill told the Dáil that from January next year, the current phased dispensing approval system will be replaced with a new system that will limit phased dispensing to the defined set of high-risk medicines.

She said the State had “never agreed to fund Monitored Dosing System” and that it would not intervene when new fees for the packs are introduced by pharmacies next year. 

Speaking in the Dáil today, Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty said that thousands of older people living with conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s rely on tablet blister packs to help manage their medication. 

“Your decisions means the cost of dispensing the blister packs, paid for by the State for decades now, will now be passed on to these vulnerable customers,” Doherty said

“They will be hit by fee charges of up to €50 a month, in some cases, for these packs.”

Doherty said if there was a mistake in how the packs were being paid for and a correction had to be made, “it should have been made to ensure that those folks could continue receiving their tablet blister packs”.

He asked Taoiseach Micheál Martin if he would reverse the decision and ensure people could still receive blister packs for free. 

‘Issue between HSE and pharmacies’

Responding, Martin said the government had generally “significantly reduced the cost of accessing medicine” over the last number of years. 

He said there was “an issue between the HSE and pharmacies in respect of the whole area of phased dispensing”. 

The Fianna Fáil leader explained that community pharmacies receive additional payments for phased dispensing, but that it was the HSE’s contention that monitored dosing systems and phased dispensing “are two separate processes”. 

He said the State “had never agreed to monitored dosing systems”, but said the government “will certainly look at any situation where there’s potential hardship on any patient or any person in receipt of medicine”. 

“We will go back and discuss this with the HSE,” Martin added. 

Doherty said people have been getting letters from their pharmacies saying that from 1 January, the HSE will no longer be providing blister packs and “there will be an additional charge of €20 per month for the packs”. 

No matter what way you present it, these packs were being funded. For right or wrong, they were being funded.

He said it was a government decision that has now “restricted the way in which pharmacies were claiming for this” and pressed Martin again on whether the government would reverse the decision. 

Sharing his view, the Taoiseach said: “I’m not so sure there should be a fee attached to them at all, but I’m not so sure either the State should be ponying up on everything here.”

He criticised Doherty for claiming the government “must pay for everything”, adding that the coalition “want to look after people with Alzheimer’s and with dementia”.

“There needs to be an engagement between the Irish Pharmacy Union and the HSE on this, but it cannot be just the case that every new system or modification of a system or approach is just agreed.”