The college wants to see even greater regulation of telehealth-only clinics.
Patients should never be prescribed medicine unless they have consulted with a GP in person, via video call or by phone, the RACGP says in a new position statement on telehealth-only clinic models.
The position statement sets out several “requirements” for telehealth-only services, including that the service prioritise and share information with the patient’s usual GP; that telehealth doctors are not offered inducements or rewards for prescribing; and that telehealth services “must ensure prescribing is synchronous and does not take place without a real-time direct consultation”.
“Asynchronous or questionnaire models are unsafe and not supported,” RACGP vice president Dr Ramya Raman told The Medical Republic.
“We’re keeping the patient at the centre of this, and that’s where it comes back to.”
While a position statement from the college is not a legally enforceable guideline, it does put the RACGP in line with the regulator.
The official AHPRA telehealth guidance explicitly states that “prescribing or providing healthcare for a patient without a real-time direct consultation, whether in-person, via video or telephone, is not good practice and is not supported by the Board”.
The RACGP has called for more regulation in the space.
“One of the key regulatory challenges is that these services usually operate outside of Medicare, restricting regulator access to the existing mechanisms to monitor and respond to quality and safety concerns,” the college position statement reads.
“In addition to these principles the RACGP believes greater regulation of telehealth only services is required.”
Related
This could look like the Commonwealth stepping in to mandate face-to-face prescribing for some medicines, a consumer-focused campaign about the safety elements which need to be considered when using telehealth or increased financial penalties for breaches of advertising codes.
The current fines, it said, were “too small” to act as an effective deterrent.
Under the current rules, the highest civil penalty for a TGA advertising breach that a court can give is $1.65 million for an individual or $16.5 million to a company.
For the cases that don’t go to court, however, the TGA calculates the fine using a formula set out in the TGA Act. It requires the agency to hand out the minimum fine where possible. This is currently equal to about $3960.
The college also called for collaboration between the usual medical regulatory agencies like AHPRA, the state health departments and the TGA, as well less traditional players like the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission.
