Joanne Lovelock died after overdosing on alcohol, methadone, after ‘doctor shopping’
Joanne Lovelock was happy and in good spirits when her family last saw her alive on Christmas Eve 2015 but her lifeless body was found less than 24 hours later.
Canberra Star
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A Canberra mum who overdosed on a cocktail of alcohol, methadone and antidepressants had been “doctor shopping”, making 69 appointments to see 11 doctors in the year leading up to her death.
The findings of a coronial inquiry into Joanne Lea Lovelock’s death on Christmas Day 2015 — published only this month — revealed she had two regular doctors in Canberra, neither of whom knew about the other, and one of whom had cut her off from the powerful painkillers she craved.
Two of her doctors were based in Gosford, where she frequently visited family, and an investigation found one of them prescribed her Endone when she showed up with an empty box of the pills.
Coroner Glenn Theakston found Ms Lovelock, 53, met the government criteria as a “doctor shopper” in the year before she died.
An investigation heard Ms Lovelock’s family last saw her alive on Christmas Eve, when she was “happy and in good spirits” but “tipsy” from drinking wine, before they found her dead at her Gordon home the next morning.
An autopsy found her blood-alcohol content was 0.289, more than five times the legal limit for driving a car.
She also had methadone and an antidepressant, Amitryptyline, in her system at levels which can be fatal.
Mr Theakston found Ms Lovelock’s death was likely accidental, and that she was probably so drunk she lost track of how much methadone and how many antidepressant tablets she had taken.
Ms Lovelock’s main doctor, Dr Philip Verghese, told police he had refused to prescribe Ms Lovelock anything stronger than Panadiene Forte and thought he had weaned her off of stronger painkillers.
Dr Verghese didn’t know Ms Lovelock had also been to eight other doctors in 2015, including Dr Gamal Helmy, who didn’t know about Dr Verghese.
According to the coronial findings, Ms Lovelock’s family told police their mum went to Dr Helmy because Dr Verghese would not prescriber her painkillers.
Mr Theakston found that neither of the doctors did anything wrong and that none of them, individually, had any reason to suspect Ms Lovelock was a prescription drug addict.
Mr Theakston said a better system for analysing prescription drug data could have identified Ms Lovelock’s “doctor shopping” before she died.
“Ms Lovelock could have been identified as a doctor shopper early on, her doctors informed, and prescriptions then issued by her doctors with a much better understanding of the medications she was already receiving,” he found.
ACT Health Minister Rachel Steven-Smith told the Legislative Assembly earlier this year — before the inquest findings were publicly available — that the ACT government would co-operate with a national scheme to monitor addictive prescription drug use.