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 New York State Department of Health's Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement (BNE) collects and analyzes data from pharmacies and practitioners who dispense controlled substances. BNE will utilize the FY 2007 award to enhance its Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) by developing and implementing the Automation of the Doctor Shopper (Practitioner Notification) Program, the Statewide Emergency Department Reporting System Project, and, the Prescriber/Practitioner Survey Project.
Through the Automation of the Doctor Shopper Program, the grantee will establish a system whereby practitioners, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC), and county District Attorneys may request to view PDMP data through the department's Health Provider Network (HPN) regarding a patient's history of receiving prescriptions for controlled substances from other practitioners. The Statewide Emergency Department Reporting System will afford hospitals the opportunity to voluntarily report overdoses and other adverse drug events involving patients seeking treatment at emergency rooms and urgent care centers. The collected data will measure the success of New York's PDMP and enable the state to identify prescription drug overdoses statewide and react to outbreaks of drug events through education and enforcement. The goal of the Prescriber/Practitioner Survey Project is to solicit concerns on how the PDMP might address controlled substance abuse and diversion issues.
The grant funds will be used to: support travel expenses for employees to attend conferences and provide regional training for healthcare providers and emergency professionals on the reporting of drug abuse incidents; purchase a server, disk space, and back-up system to house the statewide reporting system; purchase supplies to support the awareness campaign and the education of the healthcare professionals on the use of the reporting system; secure a contract company to provide two computer programmer analysts who will assess the current data collection program and create a process to access information through HPN and interface the proposed Emergency Department Reporting System with the Department of Health's secure Health Provider Network; and, contract with a survey specialist company who will create, distribute, collect, and analyze a survey of New York's 100,000 registered healthcare practitioners.
CA/NCF