Latest news with #EliseWorthington
ABC News
15-07-2025
- Health
- ABC News
Evidence of blast wave injury found in soldier's brain
Veterans say the Australian Army has failed to protect soldiers from brain injuries caused by the blasts from firing their own weapons. Now, the Chief of Army has said more needs to be done after a series of reports on 7.30 exposing the suffering of former and serving Defence Force members. National health reporter Elise Worthington reports.
ABC News
09-07-2025
- Health
- ABC News
Concern over medicinal cannabis prescribing
Isabella Higgins: The medical regulator is releasing new guidance for practitioners about the prescribing of medicinal cannabis. It comes after the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency found evidence that poor practices and surging patient demand is leading to significant patient harm. I spoke with National Health Reporter, Elise Worthington, a short time ago. Elise, first of all, what sort of problems has APHRA discovered with the prescribing and use of medicinal cannabis? Elise Worthington: Well, the number of Australians being prescribed medicinal cannabis has absolutely exploded in the past few years. And that's come about as medicinal cannabis telehealth companies have popped up, offering a really convenient, quick way for patients to get prescriptions after short online consultations. But the regulator is concerned that there's been a lack of due diligence by doctors who aren't taking proper medical histories and might be influenced by the companies they work for, which are also selling the products they're prescribing. So we've previously reported that APHRA has actually discovered more than half a dozen doctors have written over 10,000 medicinal cannabis scripts in a six month period. And they found one who'd written more than 17,000. So that equals about one every four minutes in a working day, which has really raised questions for them about how thoroughly patients are being screened. Now APHRA CEO, Justin Untersteiner said that has led to concerns about patient safety. Justin Untersteiner: We are concerned by reports of patients presenting to emergency departments with medicinal cannabis induced psychosis. We're also seeing evidence of over-servicing of patients, as well as ethical grey areas around cannabis only retail facilities. Some business models that have emerged in this area rely on prescribing a single product or a class of drug. And they use online questionnaires that we feel coach patients to say the right thing to justify prescribing medicinal cannabis. Isabella Higgins: That's APHRA's CEO, Justin Untersteiner. And Elise, has APHRA taken any action so far? Elise Worthington: Yes, so APHRA is working with other agencies like the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Now doctors have to report to the TGA, their medicinal cannabis prescriptions that they write. So APHRA is looking at the data and they have said today that they've taken action against 57 prescribers and they're now investigating another 60 doctors, pharmacists and nurse practitioners who can also prescribe medicinal cannabis. And they're really putting doctors working at these telehealth companies on notice that even if there's not a complaint from a patient, they will be asking questions about how they're writing so many scripts, checking their notes and medical records to ensure that patients are actually being properly assessed. Isabella Higgins: And what exactly is in this new guidance for practitioners in how they prescribe and what does APHRA hope they achieve? Elise Worthington: There's actually really strong evidence taking a step back that medicinal cannabis can really help with things like treating childhood epilepsy, muscle spasms, pain associated with multiple sclerosis and cancer, as well as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. But interestingly, that is not the main conditions that it's being prescribed for in Australia. So we can see that it's mainly being prescribed for things like insomnia, anxiety and chronic pain. So the guidance is quite interesting in that it really clearly states that medicinal cannabis should never be prescribed as a first-line treatment because it's an unapproved therapy for most conditions, excluding some of those ones I mentioned earlier. But that also means that it's not checked for safety, quality or efficacy by the TGA. And the guidelines state that there's not good evidence showing that it works for a lot of other conditions and patients need to be explicitly informed of that when they're being prescribed it. Isabella Higgins: Elise Worthington reporting.
ABC News
19-05-2025
- Health
- ABC News
Medicinal cannabis prescribing practices under scrutiny
Medicinal cannabis access in Australia was hard won by high profile lobbyists seeking to help terminally and chronically ill patients as an option of last resort. Now it's become big business with record numbers of scripts being written by doctors working for a growing number of telehealth companies. A 7.30 investigation has found some are being pressured to prescribe. National Health Reporter Elise Worthington and producer Emily Jane Smith have this exclusive report.
