Justice Dept. Prescription Drug Monitoring Program

In Fiscal Year 2006, Congress appropriated $7,500,000 to the U.S. Department of Justice to support the Harold Rogers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program. Prescription monitoring programs are systems where controlled substance dispensing data is submitted to a centralized database administered by an authorized state agency. These programs are designed to help prevent and detect the diversion and abuse of pharmaceutical controlled substances, particularly at the retail level where no other automated information collection system exists.

States that have implemented prescription drug monitoring programs have the capability of collecting and analyzing prescription data much more efficiently than states without such programs, where the collection of prescription information requires the manual review of pharmacy files which is a very time consuming and invasive process. The increased efficiency of prescription monitoring programs allows for the early detection of abuse trends and possible sources of diversion. The analysis of collected data also allows for the identification of outmoded prescribing practices, such as the undertreatment of pain, which may result in the development of educational programs for medical professionals.

The California Department of Justice will use its grant award to enhance/expand its drug monitoring program CURES by improving the dissemination of information collected and making this information accessible in a more timely manner to the law enforcement, medical and pharmaceutical communities. This will allow doctors, pharmacists and medical clinics to access current releasable information relating to persons under their care and thereby enhance patient care and minimize the potential for drug diversion. The project also will continue funding of an existing Criminal Intelligent Specialist I (CIS) position in the San Diego Pharmaceutical Diversion Task Force (RxNET) and hire a new CIS I (CURES). This would enable DOJ to provide prescription information to the law enforcement, medical and pharmaceutical communities in a timely manner. The new CURES position will support the program by (1) collecting, correlating, analyzing and disseminating information pertaining to suspicious activity to the appropriate agency and (2) allowing CURES to immediately respond to inquiries by emergency room doctors, validate and establish user access to the newly created web access portal(s), and maintain the CURES fax alert system.

CA/NCF