By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
AN ADDICTION expert for the state’s south-east fears more people in the municipality will be admitted to hospital having suffered overdoses fuelled by prescription medications unless doctors are provided with more detailed patient information.
The concern comes after media reports earlier this month that prescription drugs contributed to 83 per cent of drug overdoses in Victoria, prompting calls for greater controls on medication.
Monash Health addiction specialist David Jacka said Victorian doctors needed better access to a patient’s history to discern whether it was appropriate to provide them with further medications and prevent them “fabricating a story to the doctor”.
“We don’t have a mechanism for doctors to easily be able to verify a patient’s mental health diagnosis; doctors in Victoria don’t have a system,” said specialist Jacka, who also works at Casey Hospital through the South East Alcohol and Drug Services (SEADS).
“In the American healthcare system that we largely criticise, there are still systems available for doctors to monitor medications, to see what other doctors have prescribed a patient or verify a diagnosis.
“Such a system has been developed in Tasmania, and trialled in Ballarat and Geelong, to link pharmacies together and check what the patient has been prescribed with.”
Dr Jacka said the absence of such a system in Victoria is due largely to a disagreement on funding between the federal and state governments as well as patient privacy restrictions.
“We need to work with doctors to spend more time carefully identifying risks with medications,” he said.
“There are a number of isolated GPs who really need to be supported to better resist the temptation to prescribe rather than talk.
“It’s my understanding that there’s not enough GPs in Casey, and they’re under pressure from what’s in their waiting room and they need as much support as they can get, with a possible linkage to other services.”
This week the Napthine Government announced that $34 million would be spent to boost drug and alcohol-support services in the Gippsland area, the Grampians and the Hume region, as well as outer metropolitan Melbourne.
But a spokesperson for Mental Health Minister Mary Wooldridge could not yet indicate whether the new government money, to be announced in the state budget on 6 May, will include Casey Hospital.
Casey Hospital was one of 21 emergency departments given funds previously by the State Government in order to tackle ice and other drug and alcohol issues.
