THE Pharmacy Guild of Australia has called for mandatory adoption of a real-time recording system for many medicines, following the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report (PD yesterday)showing a "disturbing" 24% spike in prescriptions for opioids between 2010-11 and 2014-15.
This rise was driven by a 60% increase in prescriptions for oxycodone, the Guild said.
According to Guild national president George Tambassis, "These figures and the findings of the report are a wake-up call that governments and health professionals need to work together to implement real-time monitoring as a matter of urgency".
"Demonstrably there is a need for mandatory national real-time recording of medicines which are subject to abuse and dependence or cause harm.
"Such a real time recording system must operate across pharmacies and doctors' surgeries to be effective...greater vigilance and better exchanges of information among health professionals is also clearly needed," the Guild president added.
Tambassis noted that the data in the report was based on a time frame pre-dating the Guild's rollout of the MedsASSIST real-time recording system for medicines containing codeine.
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