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Codeine to be added to Victoria’s prescription monitoring system


Paul Hayes


27/06/2018 1:55:30 PM

The Victorian Government will include codeine in its upcoming real-time prescription monitoring system, the state’s Health Minister Jill Hennessy has announced.

Victorian Health Minister Jill Hennessy described the number of deaths due to misuse of prescription medicines as an ‘avoidable tragedy’. (Image: James Ross/AAP)
Victorian Health Minister Jill Hennessy described the number of deaths due to misuse of prescription medicines as an ‘avoidable tragedy’. (Image: James Ross/AAP)

Victoria’s real-time prescription monitoring system, SafeScript, will be available to clinicians in October this year.
 
Codeine will now be added to the system from its inception rather than added later, as was originally recommended by an expert advisory group.
 
‘Too many Victorians have died from the misuse of prescription medicines,’ Victorian Health Minister Jill Hennessy said.
 
‘The experts tell us it’s essential we monitor codeine … the misuse of codeine can have devastating consequences so we’re giving clinicians the resources they need to monitor patient use and save lives.’
 
Minister Hennessy said regulatory changes coming into effect in Victoria from 2 July will allow quality data to be collected for the launch of SafeScript, providing healthcare professionals, ‘access to up-to-the-minute information on the prescription histories of their patients’.
 
According to the Victorian Government, the changes will help to ensure accurate patient data in SafeScript and will require:
 

  • prescribers to include the patient’s date of birth on all prescriptions for medicines monitored through the system
  • pharmacists to ensure that when a monitored medicine is dispensed the patient’s date of birth is recorded in the patient’s dispensing record
  • all community pharmacies that have not activated the connection with a [PES prescription exchange service] in their software to turn on the connection by contacting their software vendor.
 
The initial roll-out of SafeScript will be focused on the Western Victoria Primary Health Network catchment area, before extending to the rest of Victoria in early 2019.



codeine real time prescription monitoring safescript


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