Indiana's Prescription Monitoring Program

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.

Indiana's Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) currently provides readily available prescription data reports to law enforcement on all Schedule II through V drugs dispensed into the state through data collected from 1700 licensed pharmacies in the state. The objectives of the enhanced PDMP are to: 1) increase the efficiency of investigative efforts by significantly decreasing the response time to user requests; 2) increase coordination among regulatory and law enforcement agencies across state lines by providing real time access to users; 3) increase cooperative efforts between state, local, and federal agencies with an alert system that allows information exchange among users; 4) reduce the quantity of controlled substances obtained by fraud or deceit with an increase of referrals to substance abuse treatment programs and law enforcement; and, 5) increase efficiency of data collection and reporting by outsourcing the data collection and error reporting functions. PDMP is expected to increase the number of users from 500 to 40,000 by 2010 and will include law enforcement officials and medical practitioners. The Indiana Health Professional Association will be utilized to inform and educate users on PDMP enhancements.

CA/NCF