The PhARIA classification described here covers the 2008 - 2009 index and is current for the period 1 July 2008 until 30 June 2009.
The Pharmacy Access/Remoteness Index of Australia (PhARIA) provides a pharmacy specific measurement of remoteness for 13855 localities around Australia. The following links provide access to lists of these localities, together with their State, Postcode and PhARIA category. Each list has been sorted by locality name. To find the PhARIA category for a specific locality click on the first letter of its name and then search first by State and then by locality name.
Please note that while every effort has been made to include suburbs, some will be listed under the major locality name. Therefore, if you cannot find the name of your suburb then you should search for the name of the city that suburb is a part of. As the PhARIA is standardised within metropolitan areas, the suburb will have the same PhARIA category.
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To lookup locations by PhARIA category, click on the number of the category and then search first by State and then by name.
Enquires can be directed to Medicare Australia. Phone 13 22 90.
PhARIA was designed to provide a comprehensive, standardised measurement of the physical and professional remoteness of pharmacies thoughout Australia, for use in the determination of rural and remote pharmacy allowances.
The concept of remoteness used in this analysis, which draws on previous work undertaken by the Department of Health and Ageing and GISCA, quantified geographic remoteness based on the road distance people have to travel to reach a range of services. This work resulted in the development of the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA). More detail about the ARIA index is presented in the Health and Aged Care Occasional Paper No. 6.
The Pharmacy ARIA is a composite index, which incorporates measurements of general remoteness, as represented by ARIA, with a professional isolation component represented by the road distance to the five (5) closest pharmacies. The location of over 13,850 populated localities were used in the development of this index.
Within the index, spatial rules have been applied to ensure that anomalies do not occur in the treatment of areas closely surrounding urban centres. These apply a ‘buffer zone’ around a centre so that any location falling within that zone will receive the same index as that centre. This zone consists of a 30 km radius around the external boundary of major centres (greater than 250,000 population), and a 10 km radius around the external boundary of remaining population centres with a population of 18,000 or more.
A further refinement was included to ensure that all urban centres with a large number of existing pharmacies were classified as highly accessible. This "9 pharmacy rule" provides that centres with 9 or more pharmacies are reclassified into Category 1 regardless of their location.
The index results, ranging from 0 (high accessibility) to 12 (high remoteness), have been divided into a 6 category classification system as follows:
| Category 1 | 0 - 1 | Highly Accessible |
| Category 2 | >1 - 2 | Accessible (Group A) |
| Category 3 | >2 - 4 | Accessible (Group B) |
| Category 4 | >4 - 6 | Moderately Accessible |
| Category 5 | >6 - 9 | Remote |
| Category 6 | >9 - 12 | Very Remote |
The index provides an objective basis for rural and remote payment arrangements as well as being a useful analytical and policy tool which could aid the further analysis of the provision of pharmacy services in remote areas.
Information on Start-up, Succession and Rural Pharmacy Maintenance Allowances can be obtained from the Pharmacy Agreement section of the Medicare Australia Website.