Medical Board of Australia will not allow ‘tick and flick’ online prescribing

The Medical Board of Australia, which is responsible for regulating medical practitioners in the country, has made some amendments to its telehealth guidelines.

what is this about

A major change in the guidelines discourages the practice of scheduling in person or through video or telephone without real-time face-to-face consultation, which the board claims is “not good practice.”

,This includes asynchronous requests for medication communicated by text, email, live chat or online that are not in the context of a real-time continuous consultation and are based on the patient completing a health questionnaire when the physician has never spoken to the patient. has,” read the guidelines.

Should this be done in any situation, a practitioner is “compelled to explain how the patient’s treatment and management was appropriate and necessary.”

Meanwhile, the guidelines will also allow for first-time consultations with a doctor using telehealth and issuance of new and repeat scripts as part of telehealth consultations.

These changes to the telehealth guidelines will be effective September 1, based on a media release.

why it matters

The medical board first proposed changes to telehealth rules in December last year to keep telehealth users safe. It is cracking down on physicians who are operating an “unsafe” form of online prescribing, writing the following reports on doctors prescribing dependency drugs. telehealth.

While the board said it considered the feedback in defense of asynchronous prescribing, it said “drug prescribing should not happen in isolation.”

“Prescribing medication is not a tick-and-flick exercise. It relies on a doctor’s skill and judgement, after consulting a patient, and recognizing that a prescription drug can cause harm if not used properly.” deliver,” insisted Dr Anne Tonkin, chair of the medical board.

The revised guidelines identify telehealth as a “significant feature of healthcare in Australia”. It emphasized that real-time doctor-patient consultation is critical for safe prescribing. Dr. Tonkin claimed, “A doctor who hasn’t consulted with a patient directly and doesn’t have access to their medical records is incapable of making good, safe clinical decisions.”

larger context

in march the The Medical Software Industry Association, the apex organization for the health technology industry, urged medical boards to change their telehealth guidelines, fearing “serious unintended” consequences. The organization raised particular concerns about the rejection of asynchronous prescribing, which it claims is an “analogous approach in a digital world”. It said that the rules laid down for the use of the technology should not prevent doctors from making professional decisions.

On the record

“Telehealth is here to stay. It plays an important role in healthcare in Australia and offers great opportunities for improving access and delivery of care, including for rural and remote patients and those living with deprivation. The interaction between a doctor and their patient is an important element in all consultations, including telehealth consultations,” said Dr Tonkin.