Why has ScriptCheckWA been implemented?
Prescription medicines can provide relief from pain, the symptoms of anxiety and more. However, the medicines monitored through ScriptCheckWA can also cause drug dependence and be harmful in other ways, such as in overdose.
Prescription drug dependence and overdose, as well as misuse and diversion for non-medical use, are major public health concerns both in Australia and internationally.
Over the last decade, unintentional drug-induced deaths have continued to rise in Western Australia. Opioids are the drugs most commonly associated with drug-induced deaths and pharmaceutical opioids are involved in a significant number of these deaths.
Alerting prescribers and pharmacists to potential risks in real-time can help them make safer decisions when prescribing or dispensing a monitored medicine, and potentially reduce the risk of death caused by preventable overdose.
What medicines are included in ScriptCheckWA?
All high-risk medicines classified as controlled drugs (also known as Schedule 8 medicines) are monitored through ScriptCheckWA. These medicines have been monitored in Western Australia for many years.
Schedule 8 medicines include:
- Opioids such as morphine, oxycodone and tapentadol.
- Stimulant medicines such as dexamfetamine, lisdexamfetamine and methylphenidate
- Alprazolam and flunitrazepam
- Medicinal cannabis
- Methadone and buprenorphine used for opioid substitution therapy (OST, also known as the Community Program for Opioid Pharmacotherapy or CPOP).
Certain other high-risk prescription only (Schedule 4) medicines are also monitored through ScriptCheckWA. These medicines are listed in the Medicines and Poisons Regulations 2016 (external site).
What to expect with ScriptCheckWA?
When your doctor or other prescriber, such as a nurse practitioner, is considering prescribing a high-risk medicine for you, they will check ScriptCheckWA to help them decide whether to write the prescription.
When you present your prescription for a high-risk medicine to your pharmacist, they will review the information about you in ScriptCheckWA to help them decide whether it is appropriate to dispense your prescription.
ScriptCheckWA is a tool to support clinicians in making safe decisions about prescribing and dispensing high-risk medicines. ScriptCheckWA does not tell your prescriber or pharmacist whether a medicine can or cannot be prescribed or dispensed to you.
When your doctor writes you a prescription for one of the medicines monitored through ScriptCheckWA, the details of the prescription will be automatically recorded in ScriptCheckWA. The same will happen when your prescription is dispensed by a pharmacist.
The following information will be recorded in ScriptCheckWA:
- date the medicine was prescribed,
- date the medicine was dispensed,
- the patient’s name, address and date of birth,
- details of the medicine (medicine name, strength and quantity),
- the prescriber’s name and practice address,
- details of the dispensing pharmacy.
WA law also requires a record be kept of any person reported as experiencing drug dependency or oversupply of high-risk medicines. This information is also available to prescribers and pharmacists, provided they are directly involved in your care, via ScriptCheckWA.
ScriptCheckWA does not contain medical notes, test results or information about other medicines that are not on the list of monitored medicines.
