2008 PMP Enhancement Grant

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 Office of Substance Abuse (OSA) will use the 2008 PDMP funds to enhance its Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) in four ways. They will:

'improve their ability to collect accurate, complete data, and perform more sophisticated analyses;
'participate in exchange of data with other states;
'perform on-going and periodic assessments of program efficiency and effectiveness; and,
'enhance collaborations with the law enforcement community, substance abuse treatment professionals, health care providers, and pharmacists.

OSA will take steps to transition Maine's PMP to the American Society for Automation in Pharmacy's (ASAP) 2005 standards. These standards are much more comprehensive and the dosing information included for liquid medications is clearer. Using the updated ASAP standards in Maine will be easier for large pharmacy chains than using the old standards, since so few other states use the old standards. Smaller pharmacies might face technological and financial challenges in complying with this change. OSA's PMP Project Coordinator will form a work group to plan and manage the implementation of this change throughout Maine.

OSA will purchase the services of the PMP data manager to create a modified data extract on an annual basis. The data will not include any identifying patient information but will include unique, randomly assigned patient identifiers.

Improving and updating content on a routine basis, OSA's PMP Project Coordinator will continue to provide in-person PMP training of health professionals of all types, in collaboration with statewide professional associations.

OSA will increase the number and variety of media and the number of settings for conducting PMP training. They will contract to create a web-based, continuing medical education course, to cover pain management and addiction.

In an effort to reach more potential users of the PMP system at reduced cost, OSA will develop, advertise, and offer "webinars" - online training sessions, to train potential users on the database. The project coordinator will conduct the webinars on a monthly basis.

OSA's PMP Project Coordinator will create a PMP user email list and provide alerts and periodic updates to current users of the data. Improvements will be made to the current educational PMP web site on OSA's home page.

OSA plans to participate in the interstate data sharing project, in hopes that clinicians in neighboring states will be able to make requests to the state's PDMP for patient-specific data from Maine's PMP.

CA/NCF