mmg.com.au

A Shepparton pharmacist and doctor have thrown their support behind a push to develop a prescription monitoring program to stop people abusing medication in the region.

Victorian Coroner John Olle called for a real-time prescription monitoring program in August last year after a Melbourne man died from the toxic effects of prescribed morphine and the anxiety-relieving drug diazepam.

Such a program would gather information on medications as they are prescribed and dispensed, allowing doctors and dispensers to determine if a patient is abusing medication.

A Department of Health and Ageing spokeswoman yesterday said such a program would be provided on a national level from July.

Presently, pharmacies are not allowed to share information with other pharmacies under the Privacy Act.

Also, with an influx of general practitioners in to Shepparton, doctors are finding it harder to share information on new patients requesting drugs.

In the past decade, Victorian coroners have made seven recommendations calling for the introduction of a real-time prescription monitoring program.

Also, as of July last year, there were seven prescription shopping-related deaths under investigation by the court.

General practitioner Dr Paul O’Dwyer said doctor shopping was occurring in Shepparton and he supported a real-time monitoring program.

‘‘There’s no doubt that it happens and it’s no doubt that it’s a huge cost to the health system and it is something that certainly needs a better system of monitoring,’’ Dr O’Dwyer said.

The Lister House Medical Centre doctor said new patients were generally not prescribed heavy medication such as morphine because of the lack of medical history and patient knowledge.

‘‘The majority of people won’t be prescribed under those circumstances,’’ he said.

Shepparton pharmacist John Anderson said prescription abuse was happening and with the onset of large pharmacies, it made it harder to track patients.

‘‘It’s more difficult in a large pharmacy with an enormous number of prescriptions going through to be able to do these checks and, in particular, ones with extended opening hours,’’ he said.

He said the government did check to see which doctors were prescribing and which pharmacies were supplying, but by the time the checks were made, it was often too late.

He said under the Privacy Act, pharmacies were not allowed to share information on patients, thus warnings on who to look out for could not be given.

However, there are checks in place.

When a patient is prescribed a heavy medication such as morphine, they are given a computer printout script and a handwritten script.

Mr Anderson said the handwriting would be compared with the handwriting they had on record of all doctors in Shepparton.

If something was off, a phone call would be made to the prescriber to confirm its legitimacy.

If it was a forgery, police would be called.

He said pharmacists could refuse to serve suspect patients and if patterns developed, of people coming into the business after going to more than one doctor, there was an obligation to notify the doctor or clinic.

Mr Anderson said a real-time prescription monitoring program was needed.

‘‘I’m sure it will come. I believe the technology is there. They just need to make it happen,’’ Mr Anderson said.