🧵.@ama_media GPs will soon be able to access new telehealth Medicare items for smoking cessation consults where they can write scripts for nicotine e-cigarettes.

From October, a doctor’s prescription will be required before a person can legally import nicotine e-cigarettes and

liquid nicotine.

The move is designed to curtail use of e-cigarettes, particularly among the young.

But it will also mean more GPs will be able to prescribe them to patients as a smoking cessation product of last resort, and potentially without having to go through the TGA’s

special access scheme.

To support the change new telehealth MBS items will be rolled out from March — although as yet there are few details on which patients will be eligible, what the consults will involve or the rebates.

The AMA says it fears they could be used by a small

group of doctors happy to prescribe e-cigarettes long-term to individual patients.

It has called on the Federal Government to prevent patients claiming the item without an existing face-to-face relationship to their usual GP or their practice.

“We are very concerned about the

idea of a specific item number that would be purely there to facilitate vaping to people with no intention to quit,” @amapresident president @omarkhorshid82 Dr Omar Khorshid said.

“The normal telehealth item numbers are linked to a patient’s usual GP and we wouldn’t want this