It’s now common for states to use these extremely helpful and beneficial federal prescription drug monitoring program, or “PDMP.” California’s prescription drug monitoring program called CURES (Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System), is a system that keeps track of doctors dispensing too much prescription painkillers, and also when patients are “doctor shopping” — going to multiple healthcare providers for the same drug, a sign of addiction and improper use of prescriptions.
Unfortunately, CURES recently took a huge hit from state budget cuts and may completely run out of money by 2013.
According to California Watch, “Given the rising rates of addiction attributed to the pain medications, there has been no worse time to cut the program, said Dr. Lee Snook, a Sacramento physician who treats pain patients. Snook said, “‘We would not like to see it go away. In fact, we’d like to see it strengthened. When dealing with addictive behavior, many of us get fooled. I get fooled. I’ve been doing this for 20 years.”
Take this staggering statistic:
“According to the CDC, the amount of morphine-based drugs has soared seven-fold over 15 years in the U.S. Since 1997, the amount distributed through the pharmaceutical supply chain went from 96 milligrams of morphine per person to 700 milligrams in 2007, enough for each person in the U.S. to take a 5 milligram Vicodin every four hours for three weeks.”
The California Attorney General’s Office says that if doctors and pharmacies have access to these monitoring systems and the controlled substance history information they provide during the diagnosis and prescription dispensing process, doctors will not be so fooled by addicted patients, thus cutting down prescription drug abuse in California.
Shum Preston, spokesman for CA state Attorney General, said CURES no longer has enough resources to provide daily technical support and answer general calls from pharmacies.
What kind of state programs do you think should be cut, so that PDMPs stay safer?
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