State’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program Yields Positive Results
For the City-Times
More than six months after official roll-out, the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) is proving to be an empowering tool to combat prescription drug misuse and abuse problems in Wisconsin, according to Dave Ross, Secretary of the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS).
Wisconsin’s PDMP is a statewide program that collects information about the dispensing of certain controlled substances and Tramadol to patients in Wisconsin. The PDMP database makes the information available to legally authorized individuals such as physicians, physician assistants, dentists, advanced practice nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and other health care professionals.
“The PDMP is working exactly the way it was intended,” said Secretary Ross. “This program is giving health care professionals access to their patients’
prescription histories and allowing them to improve patient care and reduce the abuse and diversion of prescription drugs in Wisconsin.”
Development of the PDMP began in June 2010, after the Legislature passed a proposal giving authority to the Pharmacy Examining Board (PEB) to create the PDMP. Since the law was enacted, the DSPS has been overseeing the operations of the PDMP under the direction of the PEB.
In January 2013, pharmacies and dispensing practitioners began collecting PDMP data and on June 1, 2013, authorized users began to create accounts with the PDMP. After an account is created, health care professionals and their delegates may query the PDMP database in order to gain immediate access to prescription histories for patients in their care, helping to determine appropriate treatment and referral needs.
As of the beginning of January 2014, there were approximately 10.3 million records in the database from dispensers in Wisconsin and 6,200 health care users who had created over 325,000 queries of their prescription histories.
A comparison of how Wisconsin’s PDMP ranks in terms of pharmacists registered in the first year of implementation, shows Wisconsin coming in second,
with almost 30% of the state’s pharmacists registered with the PDMP. Wisconsin also ranks high in prescribers registered in the first year of implementation, with Wisconsin coming in fifth, with almost 8% of prescribers registered with the PDMP.
“These numbers show that roll-out of the PDMP database has been successful, but we couldn’t have done it without Governor Scott Walker,” said Secretary Ross. “Governor Walker included ongoing funding for a significant portion of the operational costs of the PDMP in the 2013-15 biennial budget, which will allow the PDMP to be sustainable as the program moves forward.”
The DSPS has worked hard to hold presentations and seminars on the PDMP across the state, holding over 32 of these events with a variety of users since January 2013. Community outreach has been ongoing as the DSPS works to make the public aware of what the PDMP is and what it will do for Wisconsin’s prescription drug epidemic.
Wisconsin is now one of 48 other states that use PDMPs as part of their effort to curb the national prescription drug epidemic.
For more information about the PDMP, visit the program’s website at http://dsps.wi.gov/pdmp or email questions to [email protected]