Analysis by number of prescriptions

60 Day Prescribing Blog #1

Published on the 19 February 2026

After 1 year, 60-day prescriptions made up about a quarter of all dispensing of Stage 1 medicines

Uptake of 60-day prescribing has been slower than some anticipated, gradually increasing to account for 27% of eligible medicine prescriptions after the first 12 months (for Stage 1). The government’s prediction was that 60-day dispensing would reach 45% at this point. On the other hand, there are no signs that the policy has increased or decreased the use of Stage 1 medicines overall, or that medicines have gone to waste – concerns that had been raised by some stakeholders when the policy was first released.

Several factors may explain the gradual uptake of 60-day prescribing:

For at least the first six months of the policy, people were using up their previous 30-day prescriptions before visiting their doctors and switching to 60-day prescriptions.
Awareness among consumers and prescribers may have been lower during the first year of the policy, with more to be done to promote the policy in recent times.
Finally, prescribing software defaults to repeating the patient’s most recent prescription. Therefore, ongoing prescriptions will default to 30 days unless the prescriber manually selects the 60-day option.

Number of PBS 30- and 60-day prescription dispensings per month (Stage 1)*

30-day items with a 60-day equivalent

60-day items counted for 2 months

*Estimated from a 10% sample of all people receiving PBS medicines in Australia. For medicines listed on 1 September 2023 as Stage 1 of the 60-day prescribing policy.

The most common class of medicines prescribed in Stage 1 of the policy were cardiovascular medicines (ATC C)

Cardiovascular medicines, including statins (for high cholesterol) and blood pressure medicines, were the most common 60-day prescriptions, with 2.6 million dispensings in August 2024. In fact, most (149/247, 60%) medicines included in Stage 1 of the 60-day policy were for cardiovascular disease.

Antithrombotic medicines (ATC B, to prevent blood clots) grew to 7% of total, with 170,000 dispensings in August 2024.

Number of PBS 60-day prescription dispensings per month by therapeutic category (Stage 1)*

*Estimated from a 10% sample of all people receiving PBS medicines in Australia. For medicines listed on 1 September 2023 as Stage 1 of the 60-day prescribing policy. Each dispensing was counted in two consecutive months.