Telehealth consultations will be sufficient in many cases to determine if treatment is appropriate, including via normal after-hours medical deputising services (see information on MBS phone items below). It is recommended medical deputising GPs and nurse practitioners work in partnership with the usual treating GP or physician to determine if treatment is appropriate.
A prescription needs to be issued for the medicine to be administered. When medicines have been pre-placed in RACFs and ACCHOs, the recommendation for recording and dispensing prescriptions is to follow the same process for other orders when medicines that are held in stock are issued (for example, antibiotics). Some RACFs and ACCHOs will do this differently, and how prescriptions are handled, and the medicines allocated, will depend on the local processes in place, and local state or territory requirements.
While clinical information systems (CIS) are being updated to include these medicines and expanded eligibility, they may not initially appear for prescribing purposes. In the interim you can still prescribe the medicines in your CIS by creating a custom medicine entry. It is important to note that the in-built medicine interaction and medical condition checker will not work, and you will need to be aware of the risks and contraindications as outlined in the product information for each medicine, and as per the University of Liverpool’s COVID-19 drug interactions checker.
The two treatments should not be prescribed for the same person at the same time.
Please refer to the
prescribing requirements in your state or territory.