Phone Line Cut A Pain For Doctors
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday March 3, 2003
Drug-addicted patients are finding it easier to gain multiple prescriptions for narcotics or tranquillisers following the closure of a phone service aimed at stopping ``doctor-shoppers", medical practitioners say.
The phone service was withdrawn in July because it was judged to breach the Privacy Act, a spokesman for the federal health department confirmed to the Herald yesterday.
Doctors used the phone line to check with a central agency whether a patient had obtained similar scripts recently.
``We are discussing with the Privacy Commissioner the best way we can have that facility back in place," the spokesman said. ``It is a very important way of maintaining the integrity of the Medicare system."
In a letter to the Medical Journal of Australia, Professor Max Kamien, head of the department of general practice at the University of Western Australia, wrote that the phone line had been ``a boon in guiding GPs' management of such situations".
Doctors now had no way of checking on-the-spot whether a person was asking for drugs for personal use or to sell, Professor Kamien wrote.
He told the Herald that doctor-shopping was widespread, and practices where addicts had received drugs easily were targeted by others.
It was estimated a person seeking drugs of addiction for non-medical reasons would receive about three rejections for every doctor that wrote the script they wanted, he said.
© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald
