Enhancing Maine's Prescription 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 (PDMP). 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 PDMP 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 State of Maine will use these grant funds to: improve prescribers ability to recognize, work with, and assist patients into treatment, and increase registration and program use; enhance and improve the quality of data and use aggregate reporting to influence policy; connect providers and their patients to treatment and get treatment providers involved in using the PDMP to monitor compliance; and, investigate and implement data sharing with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Drug Control Program.

CA/NCF