Doctor blasts addict alert system
Doctors may not know they have prescribed powerful painkillers to a drug addicted patient for up to six months because of a notification system that has been labelled stupid and a farce by one of the State's most experienced general practitioners.
At an inquest yesterday into the deaths of three men who "doctor shopped" their way to the massive amounts of opiates that killed them, former Princess Margaret Hospital medical director Associate Professor Peter Winterton laid bare the reality of the life of a doctor on the front line dealing with prescription drug addicts.
Dr Winterton said many doctors would prescribe controlled drugs such as OxyContin to a patient they saw for the first time - and feared being "shot, stabbed or wounded" if they refused.
And he also hit out at the system, which only informed a GP by letter that a patient was a registered drug addict months after they had been seen, saying that a "real-time" system of patient prescription information was becoming increasingly urgent.
"The current system is just stupid to be told six months after you have seen a patient they are a registered drug addict, and who might have been to 300 practices in the meantime - it is just a farce," Dr Winterton said.
"So if I knew Mr Bloggs had been down the road for the script I was just about to write - that would be very handy."
Dr Winterton said he had experienced patients faking their identity, family and work credentials and even disguising their appearance to obtain controlled prescription drugs.
But to refuse was to sometimes invite trouble, he said.
"I don't see it as my role to be heroically fighting with a patient, and being shot, stabbed or wounded," Dr Winterton said.
The inquest is investigating how Shayne Berry, Daniel Hall and Adrian Westlund were all able to stockpile fatal doses of powerful painkillers and opiates between 2010 and 2012.
Their families say WA's medical system needs urgent change to prevent more fatal overdoses.
Mr Hall, who was addicted to oxycodone, rotated through various doctors before an anaesthetist prescribed 20 80mg OxyContin tablets after an operation on his nose. Two days later, he fatally overdosed.
Dr Winterton said Mr Hall, a registered drug addict, would have been treated differently had his addiction been known.
