Online doctor shops have been allowed to prescribe via written forms,until now.Credit:Tanya Macheda
Board chair Dr Anne Tonkin said that telehealth,which surged in popularity during the pandemic,was here to stay and important to patients struggling to get to a doctor,including people in remote areas. But she said there was a gap between online drug companies and good medicine that algorithms could not breach.
“A doctor who has not consulted directly with the patient and does not have access to their medical records is unable to exercise good,safe clinical judgment,” Tonkin said in a statement.
“Consultations enable a doctor to ask follow-up questions that help identify the best treatment for a patient,including when they have previously been given a script by another doctor,” she said.
The changes,which come into effect on September 1,will not prevent a patient from consulting with a new doctor over the phone or via video call and being prescribed medicine,though the medical board has told doctors that video calls are better than telephone calls. And the new guidelines have some ambiguity about the circumstances in which a doctor who has spoken with a patient,or whose colleague has,can then prescribe via a form.
“The board recognises that it may be appropriate for a patient’s usual medical practitioner or another health practitioner with access to the patient’s clinical record to prescribe without a consultation in certain circumstances,” its new instructions read.
The provision is intended for a patient’s long-term neighbourhood general practitioner providing services such as a repeat script of a birth control pill. If scripts are provided via telehealth,the doctor must be able to explain it was “appropriate and necessary” to the board.