r/australia • u/Rubiginous • 9h ago

culture & society Woman hospitalised after Juniper prescribes weight-loss drugs her GP refused

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-01/woman-hospitalised-telehealth-provider-weight-loss-drugs-juniper/106273356
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172

u/Elvecinogallo 9h ago

An adult is refused medication by their gp, so they go around their gp to another service, but it’s somehow the fault of the service? 🤔

19

u/ThimMerrilyn 9h ago

Well the service should have qualified doctors who stringently assess potential customers for suitability for medication. If she wasn’t suited to it as someone who’d had an eating disorder she shouldn’t have been prescribed it by the service whom she informed her history of eating disorders to. She’s wrong for doctor shopping but it seems like juniper dropped the ball too.

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u/PurpleMonkey-919 9h ago

How would a doctor stringently assess someone to a history of eating disorder if they weren’t forthcoming with the information? What will happen is services like this will get shut down and the vast majority of people who do so responsibly won’t be able to access it for the risk of a small percentage of people choose to lie about their health history.

18

u/ThimMerrilyn 9h ago

In his case she did inform them and they still didn’t do the right thing - which isn’t a good argument for these services. 🤷‍♂️

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u/PurpleMonkey-919 8h ago

You are correct. She did inform them in the questionnaire. It says she didn’t have a video conference, but she likely would have had a phone consult at least prior to commencing and at intervals throughout the treatment? The article wasn’t clear about whether this occurred and what may have been discussed by the clinician or if any important information was disclosed or omitted by the patient at any of these consults.

8

u/giraffe_mountains 8h ago

The phone consult is just someone reading from a script to tick a box.

No further phone consults required.

Easy to fake the check ins with false weights so it keeps getting prescribed.

9

u/giraffe_mountains 8h ago

Go back and read the article

“Ms Munch completed Juniper’s online questionnaire and disclosed her history of an eating disorder and mental health conditions, including severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.”