Los Angeles, CA — Doctors and pharmacists are having trouble cutting off drug abusers because of the state’s clunky process for checking a patient’s previous prescriptions, says Attorney General Jerry Brown, who wants to make the information instantly available.
Brown is to announce Wednesday that his office plans to place the state’s prescription-tracking database on a secure Web site that health-care providers can log onto to obtain the information instantly. The move is intended to make it tougher for patients to go from doctor to doctor and fill multiple prescriptions.
"We have a horse and buggy system today," Brown told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "The doctors or the pharmacists can’t really keep track — in real time — of abusers of prescription drugs."
A timetable for implementing the change wasn’t given. Brown said the $3.5 million needed for the database will have to come from private sources because the state doesn’t have the money.
Moving the state’s Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System online would allow doctors and pharmacists to immediately access a database of more than 86 million drug prescriptions. All prescriptions filled for schedule II, III and IV drugs — including powerful painkillers like morphine, hydro-codone and codeine — would be instantly available.
The attorney general’s office currently receives more than 60,000 requests annually for such information.
But under the current system doctors and pharmacists must submit requests to the attorney general’s office by fax or telephone, and it can take a couple days to fill the request.
"So (some) people just don’t do it," Brown said.
Under Brown’s proposal, the Troy and Alana Pack Foundation would fund the database’s implementation costs, with the state Department of Justice absorbing maintenance costs. The foundation was founded after and named for the two young children of Bob Pack, who were run down by a drugged-up motorist in 2003 as they walked to get ice cream.
According to the American Medical Association, as of February 2007, 24 states had implemented systems to monitor the prescription and sale of controlled substances. Many of the programs were developed in response to the federal National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act, which provides states federal funding for the establishment of state prescription monitoring systems.
When it is online, California’s new database will be the largest of its kind in the United States, Brown’s office said.
Dr. Bob Wailes, a pain medication specialist, says the proposed database is welcomed by California physicians.
"To have real-time data regarding patient medication usage would be extremely helpful and increase patient safety," said Wailes, who practices in San Diego County and is a member of the board of the California Medical Association.
Under the current system, Wailes said, doctors must look for such red flags as people who request specific drugs by name and offer to pay in cash for such popular pain medications as OxyContin and Vicodin to keep those drugs off the black market. They also sometimes use drug tests to make sure patients aren’t abusing prescription drugs.
"If people are smart there are ways they use to trick doctors into overprescribing," said Wailes. "Having this electronic database, though, will severely limit their ability to do that."
According to research from the University of Michigan’s Dr. Jennifer Meddings, a functional statewide database is a crucial tool for doctors to prescribe pain medications properly.
"It is sort of a leap of faith to write that first prescription," Meddings said. "But the registry can assure a physician that, yes, the patient has been getting this prescription previously from a physician."
Jerry Flanagan of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a consumer advocacy group based in Santa Monica, warned that in establishing such a database efforts would need to be made to ensure patient information isn’t released to identity thieves or unwanted marketers.
"Nationally, the push to put records online has evolved faster than the concern to make them private," said Flanagan.
