Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2007, $400,000)
Since the beginning of FY 2002, Congress has appropriated funding to the U.S. Department of Justice to support the Harold Rogers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program. Prescription drug monitoring programs enhance the capacity of regulatory and law enforcement agencies to collect and analyze controlled substance prescription data through 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 drug monitoring programs allows for the early detection of abuse trends and possible sources of diversion.
The Hawaii Department of Public Safety plans to enhance its prescription drug monitoring system by implementing a secure website to receive and respond to prescription information requests from controlled substance registrants. This enhancement will allow the Department to share data in a timely manner and is expected to reduce the transaction time from several days to within an hour. Prescription data will be collected directly from practitioners and pharmacists and the frequency of collection will be increased. Custom queries will be used to identify individuals who are seeing multiple doctors to increase their access to prescription drugs and those who are obtaining large quantities of controlled substances. These queries will also identify practitioners who appear to be over prescribing and pharmacies that seem to be over dispensing. Additional enhancements include the creation of digital files to capture data on users, patient data requests, unsolicited reports sent to practitioners and/or pharmacists, and alert requests and postings. These files will also be used to identify non-reporting pharmacies. Periodic training on the availability and use of the system is planned for medical practitioners, pharmacists, and law enforcement.
CA/NCF