This article appeared a few days ago.
Ministers’ bid to beat painkiller addiction
- SEAN PARNELL
- The Australian
- March 24, 2014
PAINKILLERS and tranquillisers would be sold in smaller packs and subject to online tracking under a plan to address the growing problem of pharmaceutical drug abuse.
A new framework endorsed by health ministers says greater availability of opioids and benzodiazepines in Australia in recent years has caused more addiction, overdoses, trafficking and crime. With the ageing population, there is concern the prevalence of painful conditions and anxiety disorders will only increase, raising the risk of a new older generation of drug addicts.
The experts who developed the framework believe doctors and pharmacists need support to ensure the correct use of medicine and, along with consumers, may need to be made aware of other options — including non-drug alternatives — for treatment of pain, mental health problems, sleep disorders and addiction.
A priority will be the launch of a national Electronic Recording and Reporting of Controlled Drugs System, providing real-time alerts about problem customers or dispensers, along with tougher regulations.
More here:
This seems to have been going on for quite a while!
Delayed choice for prescription alert platform
- Karen Dearne
- The Australian
- April 24, 2012
HEALTH Minister Tanya Plibersek's $5 million plan to crack-down on prescription painkiller abuse, which was announced in February, was originally funded under the fifth community pharmacy agreement with the Pharmacy Guild in 2010.
However, a decision on the platform was reached only late last year.
Ms Plibersek was responding to calls from a Victorian coroner for action on real-time prescribing and dispensing monitoring systems for controlled (Schedule 8) drugs, including the ability to alert doctors before new scripts are issued.
In February, coroner John Olle found James, a 24-year-old Melbourne man, had committed suicide by overdosing on morphine and diazepam; in the three years before his death, James had obtained S8 scripts from 19 doctors and medications from 32 pharmacies.
A spokesman for Ms Plibersek told The Australian a Tasmanian-developed drugs and poisons information system with web-based remote access would be expanded to support a nationwide rollout commencing in July.
Lots more here:
The original announcement was reported here:
Government wages war on painkiller abuse
Posted Wed, 15/02/2012 - 12:02 by Josh Gliddon
A system pioneered in Tasmania is being expanded Australia-wide in a bid to combat prescription painkiller abuse.
The federal government is licensing the Electronic Recording and Reporting of Controlled Drugs system from the Tasmanian government, and rolling it out to health professionals at a cost of $5 million.
Clinicians and other health professionals who prescribe prescription painkillers, such as oxycodone, morphine and codeine, will be able to log into a central database containing prescription records.
The federal government is licensing the Electronic Recording and Reporting of Controlled Drugs system from the Tasmanian government, and rolling it out to health professionals at a cost of $5 million.
Clinicians and other health professionals who prescribe prescription painkillers, such as oxycodone, morphine and codeine, will be able to log into a central database containing prescription records.
More here:
Note the system was meant to be online July 2012!
Here is a link to the provider of the system’s blog:
Electronic Recording and Reporting of Controlled Drugs
XVT is excited to announce our involvement in the provision of a national system that will collect information on all dispensing events related to Controlled Drugs, which is one of the initiatives to be implemented under the Fifth Community Pharmacy Agreement between the Australian Government and The Pharmacy Guild of Australia. The national solution will monitor the use of controlled drugs and provide a decision support tool for health professionals to assist in clinical decision making related to these medicines.
From 2008 we have designed, developed and implemented an electronic solution for the Tasmanian Government that records and provides real-time reports on the dispensing of controlled drugs. This has been successfully rolled out to the state health authority, pharmacies and health facilities in Tasmania and been in operation for over 12 months
More here:
So what we seem to have here is a priority to implement a system which was announced by the previous Government over 2 years ago suddenly renewed.
So there is a big delay here. If it is such a great idea I wonder what the holdup is? Two question are just how good is the idea in the context of the overall health system and just what has been the holdup.
Comments more than welcome - to explain just what is actually going on!
David.
5 comments:
I do not understand! There is something very wrong here. AMA VIC 2012/2014 Budget Submission is asking for $55 million over four years for the establishment of a real-time prescription monitoring system.!!!! (That is just for Victoria !!! – pro rata that would equate to $220 Million for Australia)!!!
Yet we read that:
1. HEALTH Minister Tanya Plibersek's $5 million plan to crack-down on prescription painkiller abuse, which was announced in February (2012), was originally funded under the fifth community pharmacy agreement.
2. The federal government is licensing the Electronic Recording and Reporting of Controlled Drugs system from the Tasmanian government, and rolling it out to health professionals at a cost of $5 million.
3. XVT is excited to announce our involvement. From 2008 we have designed, developed and implemented an electronic solution for the Tasmanian Government that records and provides real-time reports on the dispensing of controlled drugs.
Surely we are witnessing another great eHealth IT con job by our dearly beloved bureaucrats.
Oh, by the way – does anyone have any idea what has happened to Tania Ps $5 Million? Who received it? What was it used for? Did it go to XVT? Did it go into the Tas Gov’ts coffers? Having spent $5 Million how did Minister Plibersek think the system would be rolled out across Australia and at what cost, and who would pay for it?
Fundamentally simple questions. Any answers? Or is this just another example of DoHA’s hubris?
Dreeeeaam, Dream, Dream, Dream, Dream :||
Tell him his dreamin'!
Hell will certainly freeze over before any Australian bureaucrat, politician or qango sycophant is held to account for the great ehealth robbery of the taxpayer for the millennia...
PM Abbott and his stooge hand-picked and placed bureaucrat Ms. Halton will ensure this shall be and will forever remain the case. As Sinodinos clearly stated, the Billion$ spent on ehealth is a complete “neighbourhood myth”!
So Roxon, Plibersek and Dutton have all since stepped in and towed the unified political party line to the detriment of all Australians.
Enough said…
This is a very important issue for me. I understand that they are needed to be stronger regulations on prescription painkillers. Yet what about the painkillers that can be accessed over the counter??? Codeine and ibruprofen are able to be accessed over the counter from pharmacies. This has caused me so many problems, currently I am three weeks clean from codeine. I was taking 15 nurophen plus tablets a day for 4 years. These are over the counter medication. There needs to be a restriction on the selling of over the counter codeine!!!!! Please don't let anyone else go thru what I have been thru.
Looks like Sinodinos is suffering from the same bout of “Convenient Amnesia” that PM Howard suffered throughout the AWB Cole inquiry!
I suspect "Convenient Amnesia" will become a chronic disease once the inevitable inquiries get underway into this public eHealth larceny down the road...
Good Job David your BLOG may well become the “Inconvenient Antidote” to “Convenient Amnesia”, ”…in the fullness of time and at the appropriate juncture!”
Barry O'Farrell: Convenient Amnesia!
And look where that approach has got him -- more to this story to unfold methinks...
David, you really need to start the "Convenient Amnesia" Hall of Fame on your BLOG, especially when it will come to the duplicitous corrupt Rats to be held accountable for PCEHR and NEHTA crimes against the Taxpayer and Healthcare sector??
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