Victoria’s planned real-time prescribing system is only part of the answer to curbing prescription opioid misuse, pain experts warn.
Last month Victoria announced it would move to roll out the model in 2018, making it the second state after Tasmania to introduce such a system.
Real-time prescribing has been recommended by many coroners as a way to reduce doctor-shopping and prescription medicine overdoses, which claimed 372 lives in Victoria last year.
Victoria’s SafeScript system will provide up-to-the minute details on patients’ prescribing histories for S8 and select S4 medicines (benzodiazepines).
Under the new laws, doctors and pharmacists will be required to check the database before prescribing or dispensing these medicines or face fines of $15,000, according to MDA National risk advisor Karen Stephens.
However, she said exemptions exist for health professionals working in low-risk locations like hospitals, prisons and aged care.
Victorian pain specialist Dr Michael Vagg said a software platform, in tandem with appropriate education, ‘will make it easy for doctors to have good conversations with patients about sensible prescribing’.
“The aim is to enable good prescribing rather than to be Big Brother.”
But the reforms will only go so far to address problems of prescription drug misuse, he said.