The incidence of personal importation of prescription medicines among Australians 45 and older: a cross-sectional survey

Narcyz Ghinea*, Andrew Roberts, Tania Prvan, Wendy Rogers

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Objective: This study is the first to investigate the incidence of personal importation of prescription medicines among Australians aged 45 years or older, and the reasons driving this behaviour.

Methods: An online survey was distributed to Australians, aged 45 years or older, who were taking prescription medicines. Recruitment was conducted via Qualtrics. The survey was completed by 1180 respondents.

Results: In our sample, 1.8% of respondents had imported prescription medicines in the previous 12 months, 21.9% had not taken, or had delayed taking, a prescribed medicine due to cost, 21.9% described medicines as unaffordable/very unaffordable, and 17.7% took some budgetary measure to pay for their medicines. The most significant predictors (P < 0.001) of importation were doctors raising it as an option (1.0% vs 42.9%), awareness of the Personal Importation Scheme (0.8% vs 22.6%), believing that importing was safe (1.6% vs 20.9%), paying more than the maximum PBS co-payment for any individual medicine (0.4% vs 8.1%), higher monthly spend on medicines (1.0% vs 6%), and delaying or not taking a medicine due to cost (0.9% vs 5.0%). Almost half (44.4%) would consider importing medicines to save money.

Conclusions: Potentially hundreds of thousands of Australians are importing prescription medicines from abroad, and many Australians indicate they are willing to import medicines to save money.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)694-699
Number of pages6
JournalAustralian Health Review
Volume47
Issue number6
Early online date20 Nov 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2023

Keywords

  • e-health
  • financial toxicity
  • health policy
  • health services research
  • non-adherence
  • parallel importation
  • personal importation
  • pharmaceuticals
  • quality
  • safety

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