Prescription Drugs

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS (14:59): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Considering the risk of people misusing prescription drugs, either illicitly or to try to manage a medical condition, and the ill effects on health, will the minister update the council on the government's efforts to reduce the number of lives lost each year in Australia through the abuse or misuse of controlled drugs?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:59): I would like to thank the honourable member for his question. The Marshall Liberal government is committed to reducing the harms caused by preventable deaths, presentations to emergency departments and hospitalisations because of the abuse or misuse of prescribed medications. The Marshall Liberal team in opposition made an election commitment to provide $7 million to implement real-time prescription monitoring for Schedule 8 medications, and as part of the 2018-19 state budget the government committed $7.5 million over three years to support a prescription monitoring solution for controlled drugs in South Australia. I am very pleased that I can advise the council that in March this year we delivered on that commitment.

ScriptCheckSA, as it's now called, was released in March, implementing a real-time prescription monitoring system for Schedule 8 medicines in South Australia. ScriptCheckSA is supported by extensive online training for prescribers, pharmacists, patient education and support services and additional addiction medicine treatment services for patients identified to be at risk of harm from prescribed monitored drugs.

To help manage the anticipated short-term increase in demand for addiction medicine services after the release of ScriptCheckSA, Drug and Alcohol Services SA has established specialist opioid and chronic pain problem clinics in metro south, north and central and increased addiction medicine specialist and pharmacist telephone support for the Drug and Alcohol Clinical Advisory Service and the Alcohol and Drug Information Service. In addition, a specialist registered nurse has been recruited to work with the existing GP support program.

ScriptCheckSA will be an essential tool for health practitioners, providing real-time information to identify at-risk patients to support clinical decision-making so they can make safer decisions when prescribing or dispensing monitored drugs. ScriptCheckSA provides an instant alert to prescribers and pharmacists through their clinician software if patients have previously been supplied with a high-risk medicine.

South Australia is only the second jurisdiction, following the release of Victoria's SafeScript, to deliver a real-time prescription monitoring system to prescribers and pharmacists. A national real-time prescription monitoring solution is continuing to grow and will further help address prescription forgery, misuse and doctor shopping related to controlled drugs in Australia.

I would like to pay tribute to the leadership of the federal government, which has been demonstrated by the establishment of the National Data Exchange, which captures information from state and territory regulatory systems, prescribing and dispensing software and a range of external data sources to provide real-time detection and alerting for regulators, pharmacists, doctors and other health professionals. To provide users with access to national data, each state and territory real-time prescription monitoring system must be integrated with the commonwealth National Data Exchange. ScriptCheckSA was integrated in November 2020.

The individual and public health risks associated with the harmful use of prescription drugs through dependence, misuse or diversion are an increasing concern to regulators, health practitioners and members of the public across Australia. The Marshall Liberal government acknowledges the importance of ensuring the safe use of opioids to promote optimal patient outcomes. I have no doubt that real-time prescription monitoring will save lives and, more importantly, help prevent further overdose fatalities in South Australia. I take this opportunity to thank all the teams involved in delivering this outcome, both from within government and in the health sector.