Medicinal cannabis prescribing practices under scrutiny after scripts issued 'every 4 minutes'

ABC NEWS (Australia)

An ABC investigation found some doctors saying they felt they were being treated as drug dealers, pressured to write scripts and paid contingent on scripts being provided during consultations.

Transcript

00:00So medicinal cannabis was legalised nearly a decade ago and you might remember those

00:06moving scenes of the parents of people with terminal illness and of young children with

00:11treatment resistant epilepsy that really advocated for this change but since then there's been

00:17a huge transformation in the industry. Now when COVID sort of opened the door to telehealth

00:23prescribing we saw a huge number of medicinal cannabis telehealth clinics pop up and with

00:29that the number of prescriptions for medicinal cannabis has really skyrocketed more than doubled

00:34in the past few years. So what we're seeing now is also an increase in the strength of the products

00:41that are being prescribed to people that also has increased rapidly over the past few years and

00:47there's concerns about the quality of care that patients are getting prior to being prescribed

00:52some of these products through these single issue telehealth clinics. What's the experience for

00:58consumers? Well I've spoken to lots of patients who've told me about how simple it was for them

01:03to get a script. Rowan you just heard from had PTSD and was on a range of medications from his regular

01:10GP saw the ad called up never spoke to a doctor but suddenly had medicinal cannabis a high strength THC

01:18version at his door. Now when he took that as directed he didn't have a good experience he said

01:24his anxiety increased and he was advised by his regular GP to stop taking it. Now it's worth saying

01:30that most people you know medicinal cannabis is well tolerated but for people who have a pre-existing

01:36mental health condition or a vulnerability it can cause issues particularly if it's this high strength

01:42THC type product. So what regulators are concerned about is the level of care and oversight really that's

01:49being given to patients who are being prescribed large quantities of this high strength THC cannabis.

01:55And so with those concerns what has the regulator said? So ARPRA which is the medical practitioner

02:01regulator has done an analysis looking at the data and has found that there are huge quantities

02:06of medicinal cannabis being prescribed. They found one pharmacist prescribed oh sorry one pharmacist

02:11dispensed nearly one million products in a year so that's equivalent to 2,600 products a day without a day off.

02:17So large amounts from a small number of prescribers. They also found eight practitioners had prescribed

02:24more than 10 or had written more than 10,000 scripts in a six-month period including one that

02:30appears to have written more than 17,000. So that's equivalent to one every four minutes or less than

02:36four minutes. So the question they're really asking is how are these patients being assessed properly

02:41um and are they being given good medical care and um you know it really is there a conflict of interest

02:47or other incentives or issues with the way that this system is currently working um that could put

02:53patients at risk because THC containing medicinal cannabis products are schedule 8 medicines so that's

02:58the same as things like opioids um and they do have the risk for addiction and harm. So it's something that

03:04the regulators really concerned about and they've started a task force that's looking at prescribing issues

03:09more generally to ensure that patients are being kept safe and these are also not first-line treatments

03:15for most of the conditions they're being prescribed for like insomnia, anxiety and chronic pain. You know

03:20there are other treatments that um seem to be more effective and the clinical trial evidence um really

03:25hasn't caught up to speed with the amount that it's being prescribed um although patients some of them

03:30seem to say that they seek they do get relief from it. Um so really at the moment the regulator is just

03:36looking at exactly um how frequently these products are being prescribed and whether doctors are really

03:41um looking after patients.

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