Real time reporting refers to the process by which pharmacies report dispensing information to ACT Health so that it can be viewed in DORA in real time.
Real time prescription monitoring refers to the process or system used by health professionals to monitor prescriptions dispensed for a person, in order to assist their clinical decision making or identify potential harms.
All ACT pharmacies are required to report supplies of all controlled medicines to ACT Health, in accordance with the Medicines, Poisons and Therapeutic Goods Act 2008.
Prior to March 2019, all ACT pharmacies were required to manually submit this information to ACT Health each week via a web portal.
ACT Health has established real time reporting for pharmacies in collaboration with the Australian Government to support DORA’s rollout in the ACT. A real time data feed has been established to the ACT DAPIS and DORA system from the National Data Exchange (NDE) which forms part of the national Real Time Prescription Monitoring (RTPM) system.
The real time data feed enables dispensing information to be viewable for health professionals in DORA in real time, immediately after a prescription is dispensed. Information is also received via the NDE for dispensing events from interstate community pharmacies where a patient has an ACT address.
As a result of this change, ACT community pharmacies are no longer required to submit weekly controlled medicines dispensing reports to ACT Health.
All ACT community pharmacies are currently able to report dispensing information to the NDE via their dispensing software.
As of March 2019, most hospital pharmacy systems are not able to report information to DORA in real time via the NDE. Hospital pharmacies that are unable to report in real time are still required to submit weekly electronic reports to ACT Health. The Australian Government is working to establish real time reporting via the NDE for hospital pharmacies. Further updates will be provided by ACT Health and the Australian Government when this occurs.
The ACT is the first Australian jurisdiction to integrate with the NDE. The ACT plans to adopt full national real time prescription monitoring functionality in the future following initial ACT DORA rollout.