Modernization of Reporting for California PDMP

The California Department of Justice (CA DOJ) requests to change the current project scope for the FY 2021 Harold Rogers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) Grant.  Under this Project Scope Change Grant Adjustment Modification (GAM), the CA DOJ will finance enhancements for the Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System (CURES) through technological upgrades critical to the infrastructure and security posture of CURES, and finance travel for PDMP-related meetings.  CURES enables authorized prescribers and pharmacists to quickly review information via Patient Activity Reports (PAR) in an effort to identify and deter drug abuse and diversion through accurate and rapid tracking of dispensed controlled substances.  Additionally, law enforcement and regulatory agencies use CURES in their efforts to control the diversion and resultant abuse of controlled substances through their review of PARs and Prescription History Reports.  The original project scope requested funding to allow the CA DOJ to modernize and consolidate CURES reports into a single go-to platform.  The report modernization effort was intended to mitigate the technical debt that exists from managing multiple report platforms for CURES.  However, the CA DOJ identified infrastructure and security updates that are critical to the overall performance and security of CURES, which supersedes the need to have a single platform for CURES reports. With this GAM, the CA DOJ will fund and implement critical upgrades to the infrastructure and security posture of CURES.  An updated infrastructure and security posture provides better workflows and protection of CURES data that is vital to the safe prescribing and dispensing of controlled substances and supporting law enforcement and regulatory agencies in their efforts to control the diversion and resultant abuse of controlled substances.  The technological upgrades will reduce the technical effort or “technical debt” to maintain outdated technologies.  The maintenance of outdated technology diverts resources from enhancing CURES to improve usability, reports, and analytics critical to safe prescribing and combating diversion resultant abuse.  Upgrading the infrastructure and security posture of CURES will reduce technical debt, enabling California’s PDMP to focus on other critical CURES efforts.  With this GAM, the CA DOJ will implement upgrades critical to the infrastructure and security posture of CURES and fund travel for PDMP-related meetings: Implement International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) Application Programming Interface (API) Gateway – An additional layer of web service management is necessary to act as an API gateway. This will provide additional access control capabilities including the ability to control access via policy-based rules based on user/accounts, traffic patterns, Secure Socket Layer Certificates, and Token-based authorization. The API gateway will provide a queuing mechanism that can support request prioritization, failure/retry logic and messaging audits. The CA DOJ will be hiring consultant resources to assist with this task. There will be one contract with multiple consultants. Identity Management (IDM) Transition - Integrate with Enterprise Services Implementation services including Identity Portal and Identity and Access Management. The CA DOJ will be hiring consultant resources to assist with this task. There will be one contract with multiple consultants. Hardware – Procure hardware necessary for infrastructure and security upgrades. Scrum Master – The CA DOJ will hire a scrum master to capture the needs and to oversee the IBM API Gateway Transition and IDM Transition efforts. We are planning to keep the consultants but no longer have a need for the Project Manager. Part of the work will still be completed by third party consultants. There will be one contract with multiple consultants. Finance PDMP-Related Meetings Attendance – Representatives from the CURES PDMP will attend PDMP-related meetings or conferences, including grant-required meetings, such as the West Region PDMP Administrators meetings and the Harold Rogers PDMP National meeting. The denial of this GAM will prevent the CA DOJ from implementing infrastructure and security enhancements.  The CURES infrastructure and security posture will retain its outdated technology, thus incurring additional technical debt on the CA DOJ to maintain outdated technology.  Additionally, maintaining outdated technology impedes on users’ ability to quickly access CURES data.  Denial of this proposal adds fiscal burden since the current state reimbursement that the CA DOJ receives to maintain and operate CURES does not cover all of these costs.