Washington State Harold Rogers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program

Beginning in FY 2002, Congress appropriated funding to the U.S. Department of Justice to support the Harold Rogers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP). Prescription monitoring programs 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 monitoring programs have the capability to collect and analyze prescription data much more efficiently than states without such programs, where the collection of prescription information requires the manual review of pharmacy files, a time-consuming and invasive process.

The Prescription Drug Monitoring Program assists states as they plan, implement, or enhance a PDMP to: build a state-level data collection and analysis system to enhance the capacity of regulatory and law enforcement agencies and public health officials for future prevention efforts; enhance existing programs' abilities to analyze and use collected data to identify drug abuse trends, identify and address sources of diversion, and increase the number of users of the PDMP; facilitate and participate in national evaluation efforts to assess efficiency and effectiveness; encourage and implement the exchange of information under the PMIX Architecture among states to prevent cross-border diversion; assess the efficiency and effectiveness of state-level programs to make improvements and encourage additional states to implement programs; enhance collaborations with law enforcement, prosecutors, treatment professionals, the medical community, pharmacies, and regulatory boards to establish a comprehensive PDMP strategy; enable federally recognized Indian tribal governments to establish the policy, legal, and technological infrastructure to share PDMP data from health care facilities with the appropriate state PDMP.

The states' goals are to improve the monitoring of controlled substances; BJA supported the development of consensus-based, national standards to enable the interstate sharing of PDMP data. These standards and related operational guidelines have been referred to as the PMIX Specifications. Concurrently, in response to the needs of states, BJA supported the implementation of an operational interstate data sharing hub, known as the RXCheck to implement the PMIX Specifications and successfully piloted this operational solution. The National PMIX Architecture now provides a framework within which states share data seamlessly back and forth across state borders regardless of their chosen technical solution.

The grant recipient will use the grant funds to enhance Prescription Monitoring Program with interstate data sharing, education, and analysis. The Prescription Monitoring Program is designed to accomplish the following goals: implement interstate data sharing through the PMIX hub with at least two other states; educate potential and current data requesters in importance and use of the data; and use de-identified data provided by researchers to influence policy.

The Washington State Department of Health will use grant funds to enhance their prescription monitoring program (PMP). The department will use enhancement money to increase utilization by providing two services that are most asked for by the provider community. The program will also use funding to provide early evaluation of the program. CA/NCF