A NHILL family critical to the implementation of Victoria's real-time prescription monitoring system hopes the program's success will prompt further action.
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Thousands of people across the Western Victoria Primary Health Network – which incorporates the Wimmera, South West Coast, Geelong and Ballarat regions - have benefited from SafeScript since it was rolled out in October.
The system has so far alerted doctors and pharmacists at more than 400 sites in the Western Victoria Primary Health Network to almost 3300 patients at risk of harm or overdose from visiting multiple clinics or pharmacies.
SafeScript prevents people from “doctor shopping” – using one script to load up on prescription medication. Pharmacists and doctors are now able to see information about patients and their prescription history.
Margaret Millington, who campaigned for such a system since the death of her son Simon after a 16-year battle with the painkiller oxycodone, said SafeSCript is exactly what she has been asking for, and hoped its success would lead to more action from those at risk, and doctors.
“I’m sure this has alerted a lot of doctors and pharmacists to the need to have a conversation with those who they feel are at risk,” Mrs Millington said.
“I’d like to think those 3300 people now acknowledge they have a problem, and I hope they now take positive steps either to fix their addiction or seek alternative ways of controlling pain. None of us want to be in pain, but there are ways of dealing with it that won’t put lives at risk.
“I’m grateful that perhaps through our actions we have managed to save lives and give people another chance to admit where they are at in their life and move on in a positive way to their own health and wellbeing. That was the focus of our campaigning.”
Now that pharmaceuticals aren’t as readily available and their use more supervised, Mrs Millington said she hoped people would critically analyse what they took, why and for how long.
“In years gone by, prescriptions were handed out willy nilly, and I don’t think that is the answer. I think that a lot of times, doctors need to take a holistic view of looking at a patient: Maybe they just need a social prescription to get them linked into people or volunteering or exercising.”
More than 400 people died from prescription medicine overdoses in 2017. SafeScript monitors all schedule eight medicines such as morphine and oxycodone, and other medicines such as codeine and diazepam.
Stawell Amcal pharmacist Brian Hancock said he had already seen the benefits of the system.
“It comes into effect quite regularly, maybe 20 or so times in a daily basis,” he said. “We get a warning flash on the computer. We do place a bigger scrutiny on out of town customers or ones we don’t know since they are the ones more likely to be doctor shopping.
“It is helping catch those people out and keep people a lot safer.”
SafeScript is due to be rolled out statewide in April.
