RX Monitoring Article of Interest

[tadpol]

Came across this today. Interesting information for anyone that lives in the sunshine state. I see threads all the time where people are scared and think the system is on to them or going to shut them down. If everyone just spent a little time looking into how their state regulates things, it'd probably give some peace of mind.

Here's the article if interested. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/04/10/149943047/calif-s-prescription-drug-monitoring-system-feels-pain-from-budget-cuts[/URL]

[poppy13]

is that for calif or florida? please post a link

[tadpol]

California Calif.'s Prescription-Drug Monitoring System Feels Pain From Budget Cuts : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

Ug sorry, I'm new to the site and trying to insert the link with no success. If you copy and paste it to your browser?

Calif.'s Prescription-Drug Monitoring System Feels Pain From Budget Cuts : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

wait the link works now. lol sorry for the confusion. newbie fumble.

[poppy13]

i just googled it and found it but it seems it might be affecting florida as well.we can hope anyways lol

[Rocksteady17]

poppy13
Here's another link with some good information regarding the data base for Florida. Might have to copy & paste into browser search.

Florida State Profile | The Alliance of States with Prescription Monitoring Programs

[Lynx4]

Yeah, but again they just aren't as accurate as they should be. Delaware shows that it doesn't have an operational PMP when I know for a fact that it does. Years ago my family doctor could pull up to 3 years of my prescriptions and not just the ones he wrote, but any prescription written for me. If he could do that around 7-8 years ago, why is it that Delaware is never on the list of active PMPs? Maryland also has a PMP and a rather strict one but the map shows that they don't have an operational PMP in place yet. I wish they'd update the maps and information so that it's accurate at least to the beginning of 2012.

Perhaps they like to be vague and act like they aren't monitoring places that are being monitored. A few years back a team of investigators came to Delaware because Delaware was listed as the #1 state for diversion of prescription drugs. It was in the newspapers at the time; maybe 4 years ago? It's a big problem there (I moved over the state line to another state) and at any time I could do a little asking around and find virtually any prescription drug I wanted. Many of the people are ones that had car accidents and lawyers sent them to doctors to get narcotics to show that they were badly injured when the truth is that they aren't in any pain so they sell their prescriptions every month. I had a friend in Delaware that could stand outside a pharmacy about 4 miles from her house and within 2 hours she could buy an entire bottle of percocets from someone coming out. It's crazy, but yet, Delaware doesn't have a PMP? Right.

[Carter]

@Lynx4 I saw Delaware listed a state with a PMP when I selected the East Region Link right below the State Profiles link, kind of hard to see on the map.
(used RockSteady's posted link). They have a desciption of Delaware PMP, but no contact info.

[Lynx4]

Well that's good to know. I've checked those websites a few times in the last 7 or 8 years and Delaware always showed as not having a functional PMP yet when I knew it did. I clicked on one of the links posted here yesterday but it showed that Delaware and Maryland didn't have operational PMPs (color coded map). I didn't look at the other link he posted so I probably shouldn't have spoken without having all the knowledge.

I wish that the doctors who prescribe narcotics and benzos for car accident victims just so they can sue an insurance company would drug test their patients. If true chronic pain patients get tested all the time, why don't they? I knew quite a few people in the process of suing insurance companies for an accident that were getting tons of medicines and selling most of them. It's really upsetting when you're in a lot of pain and someone you know has no pain but tons of medicines that they'll sell to you for outrageous amounts. I dropped all of them and deleted their numbers from my cell phone. I even fired someone who cleaned my house because of that. She didn't sell her medicine, but she had been in an accident when she was 17 and she's 26 now and was getting more medicine than I got. I was disgusted by it all. There was nothing wrong with her and she often talked about how she and her boyfriend would get high on the weekends with her medicine. When she told me that her doctor added 4 mgs of klonopin a day to her meds (already taking 3 mgs of xanax a day) I couldn't handle it. She's too young and some doctor is ruining her life and she's letting him because she wants to get high. I wanted no part of it. She's gonna look back and be very mad at what she allowed herself to become.

[512Loyalty]

To add to this thread, please keep in mind that a PMP does not have to be in place in order to track someone's prescriptions, even without prescription insurance.

Pharmacies that are suspicious of drug abuse will contact others pharmacies within the area to inquire about said person's prescription history and will eventually contact the prescribing doctor or doctors. The doctor(s) will then add every medication name, strength, dosing, quanitity, original refills AND the prescribing doctor's information (even if it wasn't them who prescribed the medication(s) ) into the patient's medical history. This information is then relayed back to the pharmacies that have filled prescriptions for the person and action is then taken by the pharmacy (refusing to fill prescriptions, alerting pharmacies in their proximity and the proximity of the person's home, and up to alerting the local authorities).

I've seen my fair of people who have entire retail branches of pharmacies refuse to fill any narcotic scripts and even maintainance medications for individuals. And I've seen a handful of people hand a narcotic prescription to a pharmacy employee to be filled only to be in cuffs in the parking lot before they even reach into their pockets to get their car keys.

[lumphead]

This seems to be a good site to see which states have the PDMPs and the information regarding each one. Hope it helps. It is pmpalliance.org