Volume 182 - Issue 5
Prescription shoppers line
Author: Max Kamien
Med J Aust 2005; 182 (5): 255. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2005.tb06688.x
Published online: 7 March 2005
Published online: 7 March 2005
Max Kamien
Emeritus Professor, Senior Research Fellow, Discipline of General Practice, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA mkamienATcyllene.uwa.edu.au
To the Editor: Over the past two years, the Journal has pointed out the health hazards and the lack of logic in the Health Insurance Commission’s closure of its previously cost-effective and successful “Doctor Shopping Hotline”.1-4 But it has taken the death of a 25-year-old “prescription shopper” in Cairns, his crusading mother, a scathing report by the Queensland Coroner5 and public exposure of these problems by Mark Bannerman on ABC TV (The 7.30 Report, 22 Dec 2004) for discernible action to occur.
On that program, the Federal Minister of Health and Ageing promised that a “Prescription Shopper Line” would be up and running by the end of January 2005, and indeed it was activated on 31 January.
This leaves two outstanding issues. The first is for the Health Insurance Commission to engage in an open exercise of mutual education by clearly reviewing its process of thinking in closing the previously successful Doctor Shopping Hotline and its lack of urgency in reinstituting its proposed better and broader successor.6
The second, and more important, issue is in understanding the underlying factors and thought processes of those doctors whom prescription shoppers describe as an “easy touch”. 7,8
References
- Kamien M. Doctor shoppers’ rights: privacy or lunacy? [letter]. Med J Aust 2003; 178: 248. BEACABJC
- Kamien M. “Doctor shoppers”: at risk by any other name [editorial]. Med J Aust 2004; 180: 204-205.
- Martyres RF, Clode D, Burns JM. Seeking drugs or seeking help? Escalating “doctor shopping” by young heroin users before fatal overdose. Med J Aust 2004; 180: 211-214.
- Hart JM. “Doctor shoppers”: at risk by any other name [letter]. Med J Aust 2004; 181: 342-343.
- Inquest into the cause and circumstances surrounding the death of George Shoobridge. 28102004 D9 T4/GRB m/T CAIR03/298 (Previtera, Coroner). CBBIECHE
- Whalan I. “Doctor shoppers”: at risk by any other name [letter]. Med J Aust 2004; 181: 343. i1085684
- MacQueen AR. “Doctor shoppers”: at risk by any other name [letter]. Med J Aust 2004; 181: 342. CBBDACEG
- Breen CL, Degenhardt LJ, Bruno RB, et al. The effects of restricting publicly subsidized temazepam capsules on benzodiazepine use among injecting drug users in Australia. Med J Aust 2004; 181: 300-304. i1085690