Forward dating prescriptions
05-Jul-2020 13:25
The pharmacist must check these details and make sure the pharmaceutical benefit is for the prescribed person’s use.
Editor, – Dr Joanne Hayes' letter to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee ('Your questions to the PBAC' Aust Prescr 1998;) concerned a patient under psychiatric care who needed increased quantities of benzodiazepines. I thought the response from the PBAC was inadequate because it did not solve Dr Hayes' problem.
- If the PBAC cannot see its way to making special arrangements with general practitioners for such a case, at least it could make one with specialists.
It would then fall to the specialist to explain the necessity for the unusual dosage, and the general practitioner's prescribing pattern would not be distorted on the pharmaceutical watchdogs' dossier.
Not only could this be seen as a somewhat demeaning role, but she may be exposed, at the psychiatrist's behest, to charges of over-servicing and inappropriate prescribing.
Researchers have examined possible reasons that the telescoping effect occurs.