Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2008, $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 Ohio State Board of Pharmacy manages the state's prescription drug monitoring program, which has been fully operational since October of 2006. They will use the 2008 PDMP grant funds to enhance the program in the following two areas:
1) Collect prescription data directly from pharmacies in order to decrease the lag time. Currently, the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy uses a third party to collect dispensing data from pharmacies. They plan to move this function within the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy, instead of using a vendor. By collecting pharmacy data directly, this will enable them to provide critical dispensing data to their clients quicker by decreasing the lag time.
2) They also plan to develop and operate a multi-state clearinghouse for interstate data exchange. The Ohio State Board of Pharmacy will continue developing and implementing a clearinghouse to electronically transfer PDMP dispensing information between states.
CA/NCF