Healthy Skepticism Library item: 5801

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Publication type: news

Metherell M.
Doctors rewrite script for cheaper medicine
Sydney Morning Herald 2006 Aug 5
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/doctors-rewrite-script-for-cheaper-medicine/2006/08/04/1154198329002.html

Full text:

Doctors rewrite script for cheaper medicine

http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2006/08/04/1154198329002.html

Date: August 5 2006

Mark Metherell

AUSTRALIA’S biggest GP organisation is pressing for a revamp of doctors’
prescribing practices to cut excessive drug costs and reduce the
influence of pharmaceutical companies.

The Australian Divisions of General Practice has put to the Federal
Government a scheme which it claims would cut costs by $170 million a
year by alerting doctors to the latest cost-effective information on drugs.

The proposal comes as the Government wrestles with drug company and
pharmacy groups over how to tap into savings available from cheaper drugs.

Doctors themselves have come under renewed scrutiny over the sway drug
companies have on choices doctors make in prescribing drugs under the $6
billion-a-year Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

The ADGP cites an Australian National Audit Office report earlier this
year finding that the prescribing of expensive drugs by doctors outside
official guidelines was “not uncommon” and current prescription rules
were “too time-consuming and too complex”.

But the divisions’ chairwoman, Jenny Thomson, said the solution to
stemming drug costs was not more red tape but to give prescribing
control back to GPs under its plan to upgrade information to doctors.

“The current system is not smart or sustainable and simply must change,”
Dr Thomson said.

Doctors’ groups are fighting the growth in tighter rules on prescribing:
“GPs are currently required to phone a government call centre for
certain prescription authorisation – for no other reason except to save
PBS costs.”

Her organisation, which covers more than 90 per cent of practising GPs
in 119 divisions throughout Australia, has put to the Health Department
plans for regular education sessions at which GPs would meet in district
groups to discuss the latest information on drug efficacy and cost, and
prescribing patterns in their district.

“GPs will be able to have direct access to critical data that is not
currently available to them,” she said.

The firm that has developed the plan, Effective Resource Management, had
estimated the resulting effect on prescribing practices would generate
savings to the PBS of about $170 million a year.

It proposes that the savings in PBS costs made in each district be
redirected to finance local primary health projects.

Tony Hobbs, a NSW GP who has participated in a trial of the scheme, said
the regular meetings of local GPs to discuss prescribing policies had
generated savings in PBS costs of $45,000.

Dr Hobbs, of Cootamundra, said the process had not only empowered the 10
GPs involved but the resulting savings had been used to develop a
pre-diabetes centre in Wagga Wagga. He said it was well documented that
GPs often relied too much on promotional material provided by drug
companies. The Effective Resource Management scheme encouraged “doctors
to look at information [on drugs] fairly critically”, he said.

In its briefing to the Health Department, ERM said that similar
approaches in New Zealand had delivered savings of up to five times the
cost of the scheme.