Real-time Monitoring Ahead
Painaustralia has welcomed the Australian Government’s $16-million plan for a national real-time prescription monitoring system but is keen to ensure the system is nationally consistent and provides support to people with chronic pain who are often unable to get the right treatment.
The announcement of a national plan comes as Victoria introduces real-time prescription monitoring legislation for its $29.5-million plan and Tasmania continues with its system known as DORA (Drugs and Poisons information system Online Remote Access) implemented in 2011.
In general practice data on opioid prescribing in Australia, it was found that at least one opioid was prescribed in five percent of consultations, while 73 percent of consultations related to multisite pain had an opioid prescribed.
Currently in Australia people with chronic pain are still being forced to wait as long as a year for treatment in a public multidisciplinary clinic, while many cannot afford the number of allied health treatments required to manage their pain effectively without over-reliance on painkillers.
Painaustralia believes that says fixing the problem of over-use of prescription painkillers where there is an underlying issue of chronic pain requires other steps. These include:
- an alert system to identify patients who have chronic pain and are at risk of addiction;
- ensuring our health workforce is skilled in best-practice assessment and treatment of pain;
- better access to public pain services, particularly for people in regional Australia;
- clear pathways for referral to both addiction specialists and programs as well as best- practice chronic pain support, utilising primary health care as much as possible; and
- an overhaul of our Medicare and private health insurance systems to make ongoing allied health support affordable for people.
There must also be a consistent approach across all jurisdictions, to ensure data can be shared, and Painaustralia hopes this will be a consideration when national legislation is formulated.
The Victorian bill covers all Schedule 8 medicines such as oxycodone (brand names include Oxycontin and Endone), and other high-risk medications including morphine and all benzodiazepines. Codeine will also be monitored at a later stage to allow clinicians time to adjust to the rescheduling of over-the-counter codeine products. It makes it mandatory for prescribers and pharmacists to check the system before writing or dispensing a prescription for a high-risk medicine.
DORA tracks prescriptions of opioids and alprazolam (brand names include Xanax and Kalma). Since DORA was implemented, opioid-related deaths in Tasmania have decreased by about 30 percent.
To find out more about Victoria’s real-time prescription monitoring system, click here. You can also download Minister Hunt’s media release and Painaustralia’s media release on these issues.