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Fund prolonged consultations to boost AOD care: Report
The parliamentary report on the health impacts of alcohol and other drugs also backed AOD training at medical colleges.
A new Parliamentary report includes 30 recommendations designed to reduce harm from alcohol and other drugs.
A push for mandatory training at medical colleges and investment in longer consultations are among the recommendations from a long-running parliamentary probe into the health impacts of alcohol and other drugs.
On 14 September, the Federal Health, Aged Care and Disability Standing Committee published findings from the inquiry, making 30 recommendations for change.
It questioned whether policy settings ‘appropriately support the prevention, reduction and recovery of alcohol and other drugs-related health harms on individuals, families and communities’, and found access to care would be improved by ‘funding prolonged consultations through the Medicare system’.
The committee, which was chaired by paediatrician-turned-MP Dr Mike Freelander, also urged the Australian Government to ‘work with medical colleges to mandate alcohol and other drug training in their learning curricula’.
Other recommendations include establishing a mandatory alcohol advertising and marketing regulatory framework, national standards for the online sale and delivery of alcohol, and prioritising support for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).
In its original submission to the inquiry, the RACGP described FASD as ‘the most common preventable non-genetic cause of developmental disability’.
The committee found ‘public awareness of the risks of prenatal alcohol consumption and FASD in Australia remained low’.
More broadly, it also noted ‘some positive declines in consumption’ of alcohol and other drugs but said it ‘remains concerned around the continued high levels of harm being experienced, noting that these harms are not equally distributed across population groups, genders or parts of Australia’.
Dr Hester Wilson, who is Chair of RACGP Specific Interests Addiction Medicine and appeared at the inquiry, supported the report’s findings broadly, and welcomed the support for longer consultations.
‘I really liked the focus on FASD because that is such an issue,’ she told newsGP.
‘Overall, when I look at the recommendations, they’re really good, there’s some really nice recommendations about alcohol advertising and taxing.’
However, Dr Wilson still has concerns about how the suggestions are put in place.
‘At one end, you’ve got the prevention, early intervention, which is the vast majority of people in our communities, and so we can do that,’ she said.
‘But you’ve also got, at the other end, a group of people that have complex chronic multimorbidity. At the moment, they’re the ones who are not able to access the care that they need.
‘They might be able to get their drug and alcohol care in a specialist drug and alcohol setting, but where are they going to get their holistic care?
‘And the way the system is set up at the moment, this is a group of people who miss out.’
Dr Wilson noted moves to expand the groups of health professionals who can do early intervention, screening and prescribing.
‘What it doesn’t address is that what you can end up with as a result is siloed, isolated clinicians trying to manage people with complex needs on their own without actually collaborating,’ she said.
‘The real importance is how we bring together teams in useful ways so that all of us can work at the top of our scope for what we’re trained to do, whether we’re GPs, addiction specialists, nurses, pharmacists, counsellors, peer workers, whatever our particular training is.’
The committee’s Deputy Chair and Kooyong Independent MP Dr Monique Ryan urged the Federal Government to focus on use of telehealth for prescribing unapproved peptides, an issue that was not covered by the report.
‘This is a significant gap in regulation of healthcare in Australia,’ she said.
‘I recommend that the Government commission a dedicated review of telehealth prescribing practices in Australia, with particular attention to the prescription of peptides and other emerging or unapproved substances, the adequacy of current prescriber obligations and oversight, and the health and safety risks these practices pose.’
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