Dodgy Melbourne pharmacist busted prescribing thousands of codeine tablets to one patient

A Kingsville pharmacist has been caught doling out more than 52,000 codeine tablets to a single patient over a three-year period, leading authorities to question how she got away with it for so long.

A Melbourne pharmacist handed over more than 52,000 codeine tablets to a single patient before her highly dangerous prescribing was uncovered during a Department of Health investigation.

At the height of her illegal prescribing, Kingsville pharmacist Huyen Tran was providing the patient with an average of 52 codeine tablets a day based on fraudulently altered prescriptions.

Ms Tran registration as a pharmacist was suspended in March and last month she was fined $100,000 in Sunshine Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to a slew of charges.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency on Wednesday also confirmed it was investigating Ms Tran after Department of Health investigators first raised alarms over her record codeine prescribing in October 2018.

Codeine misuse has been highlighted as a major issue for Australian health authorities in recent years, and Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said it was vital the law kept the community safe from the harm painkiller abuse can cause.

“Pharmacists are among our most trusted medical professionals and most do incredible work – that’s why it’s so important we identify the rare cases where somebody is doing the wrong thing and putting the community at risk,” Ms Mikakos said.

Codeine is the fourth most common drug involved in overdose deaths in Victoria.

An opioid drug closely related to morphine, codeine-containing medicines have only been available on prescription in Australia since February 2018.

Codeine abuse has been identified as an issue for Australian health authorities. Picture: iStock

But after discovering a single patient had obtained the state’s highest dose of codeine-containing analgesics from Ms Tran’s Kingsville Pharmacy between June and October 2018, the department launched an investigation into her prescribing.

The probe revealed Ms Tran had provided 52,368 codeine-containing tablets to a patient using fraudulently altered prescriptions between May 2015 and October 2018 - an average of 39 tablets per day, escalating to 57 tablets a day at the height of the issues in 2018.

Hundreds of instances where Ms Tran had reason to believe scripts were fraudulent or she was asked to provide quantities that could not be considered medically necessary were also uncovered.

On August 2 Ms Tran pleaded guilty to 10 charges, which covered 457 separate breaches of the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act.

While handing down a $100,000 fine and ordering Ms Tran to pay legal costs of almost $11,000, Magistrate Jennifer Grubissa said the behaviour had the potential to cause “grave harm” and needed to act as a deterrence to the wider community.

“It is very difficult for me to understand how somebody with your professional background, which requires such a high level of responsibility, would ever allow herself to be placed in this position, let alone be placed in this position time and time and time again in regard to the vast number of contraventions,” Mr Grubissa said.

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“I do have an appreciation in regard to the fine I have settled upon, that will impose a great burden upon you, but there must be a way the court can – immediately – show the rest of the community, particularly those that operate in your particular professional realm that these are offences they ought not to enter into under any circumstances whatsoever.

“They need to take their professional integrity very, very seriously to ensure offences of this nature simply do not occur in the first place.”

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