Victoria’s new prescription monitoring system credited with saving patients lives

More than 116,000 potentially dangerous scripts or patients undertaking “doctor shopping” have been detected in the first two months of a western Victorian rollout of the state’s new prescription monitoring system.

More than 116,000 potentially dangerous scripts or patients undertaking “doctor shopping” have been detected in the first two months of a western Victorian rollout of the state’s new prescription monitoring system.

More than 116,000 potentially dangerous scripts or patients undertaking “doctor shopping” have been detected in the first two months of a western Victorian rollout of the state’s new prescription monitoring system.

After 414 Victorians died from prescription medicine overdoses last year, the initial alerts delivered to doctors and pharmacies from Victoria’s SafeScript system have already been credited with saving lives.

While the Australian-first real-time prescription monitoring system will be fully rolled out across Victoria in April 2019, it was brought online in western Victoria at the start of October in a soft launch.

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After analysing the first two months of data from the system, SafeScript director Matthew McCrone said it had alerted doctors and pharmacists to more than 116,000 cases where patients may be at risk of harm due to conflicting medications or other issues.

Figures show 414 Victorians died from prescription medicine overdoses last year.

The system also raised alerts for almost 3300 cases of potential doctor shopping, where patients had visited four or more doctors within 90 days, indicating patients may have prescription medication dependency.

Mr McCrone said the alerts did not automatically stop a prescription being issued, but did prompt doctors or pharmacists to examine a patient’s history and determine if there was an issue.

“It is about what happens next, it is about what the next conversation is. It is not about abandoning that patient,” Mr McCrone said.

In each of the past six years deaths caused by prescription medicine misuse have outnumbered the road toll, prompting the Andrews Government to plough $29.5 million to implement the monitoring system.

Currently SafeScript is monitoring all Schedule 8 medicines such as morphine and oxycodone, and other medicines such as codeine and diazepam, which Health Minister Jenny Mikakos said was saving lives.

“Prescription drug dependency can happen to anyone and the consequences can be tragic,” Ms Mikakos said.

“Now, health professionals can access real-time information about a patient’s prescription history – and discuss with them the risks of using dangerous amounts of prescription medication.”

The initial SafeScript rollout involves more than 400 clinics and pharmacies across the Western Victoria Primary Health Network, extending from Ararat and Geelong, to Maryborough, Stawell and Warrnambool.

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