Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency has reminded doctors to place patients’ well-being above profits.
Medical cannabis in Australia has grown in popularity since it was legalized in 2016. According to Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2022–2023, 3% of Australians had used cannabis for medical purposes in the previous 12 months; equating to around 700,000 people. The numbers would even be higher today.
Concerns have been raised about the prevalence of poor prescribing. Extreme examples include eight practitioners who have issued more than 10,000 scripts in a six-month window — and one who appears to have issued over 17,000 scripts.
The following are other examples of poor practice:
- Consultations that last a few moments or seconds.
- Prescriptions without any legitimate conditions.
- Patient assessment is not adequate.
- Verifying identification incorrectly
- Prescribing excessive quantities.
- Insufficient coordination between a patient and his or her other doctors.
- You can self-prescribe or prescribe to your family.
- Conflicts of Interest
Justin Untersteiner, CEO of Ahpra, says the following about this last point:
“Some business models that have emerged in this area rely on prescribing a single product or class of drug and use online questionnaires that coach patients to say ‘the right thing’ to justify prescribing medicinal cannabis.”.
Ahpra said the situation could lead to severe patient harm including psychotic episodes that require hospital admission.
Recently, updated guidance was released by Ahpra and National Boards to assist practitioners in meeting their prescribing obligations. There’s nothing particularly new in it and rules haven’t been changed — this is to just remind prescribers of their obligations, and acts as a shot across the bows for those that aren’t observing them. It builds on the existing guidance regarding safe care.
Ahpra warns:
Even if there is no complaint, we will look into practitioners who are prescribing a lot of scheduled medicines, which includes medicinal marijuana.
Ahpra’s guideline for the medical cannabis prescription can be viewed here.
This organisation also encourages the reporting of inappropriate prescribing behaviors:
We encourage both patients and professionals to call our Notification Hotline at 1300 361 041 in order to report any unsafe practices. You can report any unsafe practice by calling our Hotline Notifications at 1300 361041.