Optimizing Maryland's Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP)

Maryland Department of Health’s Office of Provider Engagement and Regulation (OPER) has prioritized creating a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) infrastructure supportive of reporting, data analytics, and improved experiences for healthcare practitioners, investigative users, and PDMP administrative staff for the public health surveillance needs of Maryland. Enhancements are needed to manage and streamline PDMP data and to improve PDMP functionality to align with national best practices and state priorities. Fine-tuning the existing technology and keeping up with industry standards is a continual effort worthy of investment to keep clinical tools relevant to the evolving nature of the opioid epidemic and technology landscape. Maryland continues to see rising numbers of fatal and non-fatal opioid-related overdoses and recognizes that healthcare providers serve an important role in preventing future overdoses.

Through this grant, OPER will further improve the use of PDMP data by enhancing the PDMP infrastructure, enhancing interstate data sharing to ensure a more comprehensive approach to tracking prescriptions across state lines and upgrading OPER’s infrastructure and analytics to better support compliance, investigations and other critical functions. Additionally, improving clinicians prescribing practices remains a priority, necessitating ongoing adjustments to existing technology to keep pace with industry standards. The development and implementation of public facing dashboard (hMetrix) is also crucial, ensuring transparency and accessibility while maintaining the program’s effectiveness. These vital enhancements will allow OPER to adapt to the ever-evolving landscape of prescription drug monitoring and will ensure the program remains up to date and relevant. Maryland prescribers, dispensers, investigators, community members, and public health staff will benefit from these improvements.

These five main objectives of this proposal, as listed above, will enhance Maryland’s PDMP to align with industry standards and to better support the use of PDMP data in real-time clinical decision-making. To achieve the objectives of this grant, the Maryland PDMP will leverage and build upon significant groundwork laid from years of innovative expansion of the PDMP and stakeholder collaboration.

Enhancements created through this grant will be based on recommendations from the PDMP Advisory Board, the Technical Advisory Committee, Investigative Users, and Clinical User pilots and surveys, and from collaborations with other states’ PDMP staff. PDMP seeks input from relevant stakeholders to ensure the data products and clinical tools will be useful to end users.