The Department of Health only released a document on the Opiate Dependence Treatment Program in response to a Freedom of Information request and only then after attempting to charge the applicant fees.
Documents obtained by BioPharmaDispatch show it took almost three months for the Department to process and ultimately release a single document that should have been readily available in the public domain.
The document is the 'determination' by a Department of Health official and is the basis for the program that removes pharmacy remuneration and allows the imposition of uncapped and unregulated dispensing fees on PBS-listed medicines made available through the Opiate Dependence Treatment Program (ODTP).
Health minister Greg Hunt has described this is as a 'special arrangement' under Section 100 of the National Health Act 1953.
Yet the document giving effect to this one 'special arrangement' was not in the public domain until September 2019 and only then in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
The document has never been registered as a legislative instrument.
The applicant submitted their FOI request in July 2019 seeking access to the "special instrument" for the ODTP.
The Department's first response, which was sent to the applicant in early August, was to levy a fee to process the application on the basis it would take more than five hours to find and review the document.
To put this in context - the applicant sought a single document that gave effect to a policy that removes pharmacy dispensing fees and the protection of PBS co-payments and safety net.
Yet, based on the Department's response to the applicant, it appears the document was not even readily available to it. They had to find it.
The applicant subsequently sought a review of the decision to levy a fee on the FOI and the Department relented on 4 September 2019, dropping the fee and releasing the document, albeit in a redacted form.
The Department redacted a section of the document that appears to include information related to the listing of the treatments funded through the ODTP.
