Also, he's a 35-40 minute drive away in a city where you can drive from furthest corner to furthest corner in 45 minutes outside peak hour.
Local GP is a 5min drive, generally only has a 3-4 week wait, and is right next to the phlebotomist as well as the supermarket.
Fortunately, I don't have to see specialists very often, because Canberra has a dearth of them. I can get urology here and my hand surgeon is amazing, but there's only one dude who can excise chalazions from eyelids, and for anything hypermobility related I'm better off driving to Sydney.
(instead of giving the paper back with your meds). I prefer to be able to look at my paperwork and see when I can get more, so I choose the other state. The other controlled meds, current and past, that I've been prescribed outside hospital have been prescribed in the other state.
What's a bandstand?
Unfortunately, my ADHD meds HAVE to be prescribed by my prescribing GP, but except when I'm asking him to refresh scripts I've run out of while incidentally at our 6mo appts, I don't go see him, cos he's got a minimum 3-6mo wait, he only does 1hr appts (required for ADHD review), at $400 each
The prescribing GP is required to use the states' prescription monitoring system. This is supposed to help docs monitor for potential interactions and for potential OD issues with controlled substances, but can also target people with complex and chronic medical needs.
However: due to living on the border between two states, I had the choice when getting ADHD meds of which state to get them in. At the time, one didn't have a computerised monitoring system that was widely used, so pharmacies in that state were allowed to hold on to your prescription
This includes adjusting dosage, up to 50mg/day dexamfetamine, OR 70mg/day lisdexamfetamine OR 108mg/day methylphenidate. I found this out at my last prescribing GP appointment.
There's a few more boundaries, but the one that WOULD be the one most likely to affect me is defeated by a previous system
So my ADHD meds are monitored by one state and my other controlled meds by the other. So I am much less likely to be flagged for having monitored medicine supplied by multiple providers...
(I joke, I looked it up and they seem to be a subset of gazebo, like the Elder Park Rotunda in the city I grew up in sahistoryhub.history.sa.gov.au/things/elder... )
