SafeScript: Wimmera doctor, pharmacist call for more specialist pain services

Chief executive Catherine Morley discussed some of the organisation's projects as the annual Medication Dependence Prevention Month began on Wednesday.

"There are a lot of people living in our community on Opioids," she said.

"We have a program where Dr Andrew Horwood - who used to work here as a GP - comes up from Melbourne once a month to run a peer support group.

"He's passionate about chronic pain management, and he believes there are evidence-based practices that can support people who are on significant doses of pain relief to improve how they manage their chronic pain.

"Andrew says there are a lot of people with chronic pain on medication who want to get off them, and at the moment our community resources aren't at the stage where can refer them to people who can assist them with that.

"We're currently working with the Western Victoria Primary Health Network, the Wimmera Primary Care Partnership and Department of Health and Human Services to see how we can get a sustainable pain management program in the region.

Ms Morley said there were four allied health professionals across the Wimmera undertaking education to get a graduate certificate in pain management.

She said the organisation was also educating the region's doctors on how they could work more effectively with people who came to see them with acute pain.

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Cobie McQueen, co-owner and lead pharmacist at Priceline Horsham, agreed there was a need for more specialist pain services.

"It's quite difficult to get into any in the Wimmera, and there is some data that shows the further out you get from major cities areas, the higher the rates at which Opioids and other high-dose pain medications are getting prescribed," she said.

"Any sort of increased access that the Wimmera can get for specialist mental health and pain resources would be greatly appreciated and sorely needed."

This year's Medication Dependence Prevention Month follows the roll out of the SafeScript real-time prescription monitoring system in Western Victoria. Ms McQueen said system had integrated fairly simply into the pharmacy's dispensing software.

"We get sent an alert when we dispense one of the medicines, and the patient will either get a green, amber or red alert depending on their history, which then prompts us to go in and check their profile to see if they have had any similar medications prescribed or dispensed elsewhere," she said.

Ms McQueen said patients whose prescriptions had been declined had been fairly positive.

"In the event we do need to decline a prescription, we refer them back to their prescriber and maybe even have a chat with that prescriber to come up with a management plan."

Ms McQueen said when SafeScript began, the state government provided the pharmacy with extra training material to help identify patients at risk and have constructive conversations with them.

"It may be a case that the doctor needs to be reviewed by their prescriber, other times it may be need the dispensing monitored more closely, so we may recommend they go onto a stage supply, which is where we only release certain amounts of medication at a time depending on their individual needs."

"If necessary we can also link them with other supporting resources. Not everyone who gets flagged has addiction issues, but if they are, we can connect them with Grampians Community Health or Uniting Wimmera."

The theme of this year's Medication Dependence Prevention Month is "Prevent misuse, plan to reduce".

As part of this, the Wimmera Drug Action Taskforce is urging people to make a plan with their health professional to come off medication the moment they are prescribed it.

The organisation said pain and sleep medication action plans could be downloaded via the website www.scriptwise.org.au/prevention-month.