Australia has ‘significant’ opioid problem, says health minister in GP warning

THE Turnbull government has compiled a hit-list of doctors excessively prescribing addictive painkiller opioids, endangering young lives — and are warning the biggest culprits that they could be struck off if the scripts aren’t warranted.

Oxycodone is the generic name for a range of opioid painkilling tablets.

THE Turnbull government has compiled a hit-list of the doctors who are excessively prescribing addictive painkiller opioids, endangering young lives — and are warning the biggest culprits that they could be struck off if the scripts aren’t warranted.

The Saturday Telegraph can exclusively reveal one country doctor wrote 68,354 opioid doses in an 11-month period — equivalent to 35 standard doses per consultation — while a city doctor prescribed 56,859 standard doses of opioids in the year to November 2017.

In another case, a doctor wrote 46,000 opioid prescriptions in a nine-month period.

Pop icon Prince died from a painkiller overdose. A two-year judicial investigation did not find evidence of intentional wrongdoing.

In the Donald Trump-­inspired crackdown, about 4800 GPs are now being monitored and have been warned to prescribe opioids only when necessary or they could face restrictions on practice or being struck off entirely.

“Australia has a significant opioid problem,” Health Minister Greg Hunt said.

“I want to make sure that it’s not the opioid crisis that has had such a devastating ­impact in the United States and elsewhere.

“The Department of Health reserves the right to refer any egregious cases to the Professional Standards Review, but the evidence is that once doctors are aware that their practices are out of alignment, it can have a moderating ­impact on behaviour.”

US Republican Paul Ryan speaks about the opioid crisis during his weekly news conference on Capitol Hill this month.

The Chief Medical Officer’s letter to the 4800 GPs who prescribe the most opioids warns them that opioid dependence can develop rapidly and withdrawal symptoms can be mistaken for pain.

“Seventy per cent of all fatal opioid overdoses in Australia involve prescription opioids and pharmaceutical opioid deaths now exceed heroin deaths by a significant margin,” it states.

The GPs are told of the specific number of opioid prescriptions they personally issued and how much higher it was compared with their peers.

“Over the next year, the ­Department of Health will be monitoring opioid prescribing by GPs,” the letter dated June 8 states.

“In limited cases where there are concerns of potential inappropriate practice, the ­Department of Health will consider referring practitioners to the Practitioners Review Program.”

Mr Hunt said the overwhelming and vast majority of doctors were behaving appropriately and noted they may be working with palliative care patients or patients with ­extreme and chronic pain.

The AMA and the RACGP were involved in designing the new compliance program.

It was developed after concern about the number of young people losing their lives from overdosing on opioids.

In the past fortnight, Mr Hunt met with health officials in the US to discuss the epidemic of opioid addiction, where he was told it was affecting life expectancy in that country.

More than 2145 deaths in Australia between 2011 and 2015 were linked to opioids oxycodone, morphine, codeine, fentanyl, tramadol and pethidine, while 985 people died from a heroin overdose.