NURSES will be able to prescribe cheap medicines to their patients in Budget plans to widen their role in frontline health services.

Article from: 
Steve Lewis and Sue Dunlevy
April 29, 2009 12:00am

Experienced nurses - known as "nurse practitioners" - will be able to prescribe Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medicines.

This will save their patients hundreds of dollars on necessary prescription drugs. The cost of common antibiotics, for example, would fall from $17 to $5 for pensioners if nurse prescriptions were subsidised.

The bold reform will expand health services in the bush, nursing homes and other areas struggling to cope with a shortage of 1300 GPs.

It will allow nursing practitioners to fix bottlenecks in the health system by treating nursing home patients with minor ailments, prescribing vaccinations and antibiotics for tonsilitis and urinary tract infections, and even contraceptives.

The Budget measure will be promoted as making health services more affordable, particularly in the bush.

But the Australian Medical Association has campaigned to keep a monopoly on prescribing subsidised medicines.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and senior ministers signed off yesterday on the thrust of the May 12 Budget.

With the recession slashing billions of dollars from revenue, the Budget will finance a pension increase at the expense of wealthier families.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon has championed a broader role for nurses, claiming they are "under-utilised and undervalued" in the health system.

There are about 350 nurse practitioners in Australia who have 10 years' experience and a masters degree in nursing.

They can write prescriptions for up to 200 medicines.

But their patients have to pay full price for the drugs, which can cost hundreds of dollars because the PBS does not cover medicines prescribed by nurses.

Nurse practitioners are qualified to treat many common ailments.

A study of nurse practitioners in the emergency department of a major Melbourne hospital found they could treat about 30 per cent of the waiting patients.

In October last year Ms Roxon told a nurse practitioner conference she wanted to extend their role as the nation's doctor shortage worsened.

She said she was considering providing government subsidies for the drugs they prescribed, and looking at whether Medicare could cover the cost of nurses' visits.

She wanted nurses to be able to visit patients in nursing homes and to prescribe antibiotics to treat urinary tract infections and collect urine samples.

In some remote areas nurse practitioners are the only form of health care available.