Pros And Cons Of Pdmp

Recommendations Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMP) have made a decent impact on the fight against opioid overdose in the United States, but in order to combat such an dangerous epidemic the program needs to add adjustments to it. The first recommendation to improve the PDMP is to promote the program better among physicians and pharmacists (Network for Excellence in Health Innovation [NEHI], 2015). Another way to improve the PDMP is to make the program user friendly among physicians and pharmacists. Clinical staff that are using the program, agree that it is helpful in determining who could be doctor shopping, but they complained that the program is not easily accessible and the usability is hard to operate (NEHI, 2015). Physicians

As of right now each state that is participating in the program has their own timeline as to when physicians and pharmacists have to input a prescription dispersion; with some states allowing a hourly, daily and weekly, data input into the PDMP systems (Perone, Nelson, 2012). The nation should be on one filing system, meaning that every state should have to input data in the same time frame as other states. This would help improve doctor shopping monitoring, and help catch patients who are using multiple pharmacists, and this would also help catch patients who are traveling to different states to get prescription from other doctors and pharmacists (Perone, Nelson, 2012). Lastly, the PDMP should be mandated to any doctors and pharmacists who are legally allowed to prescribe opioids or any type of high classified prescription drug. The target group of this program is physicians and pharmacists who prescribe these drugs, well if the majority of the health care system is not using the program, how would one determine its true impact on society (Perone, Nelson, 2012). In order to see the true impact this program should be a tool that doctors and pharmacists learn how to use in school and be a new educational requirement for personal who

Hypothetically saying, if the above recommendations, easier access, user friendly system, reliable data, mandate among prescribing health professionals, were implemented into the PDMP it would make it easier for active and constant monitoring of this epidemic and allow for non-prescribers to get involved in fighting this battle (Perone, Nelson, 2012). Not only will the improvements help the health professionals but they will help qualified non prescribers as well. For example giving access to law enforce the like DEA could help catch prescribers who seem suspicious, or catch patients who doctor shop (Perone, Nelson, 2012). This information could also be made available to qualified public health professional. New programs and intervention can be developed in states, communities and populations that show high opioid use by prescription (Perone, Nelson, 2012). Once these recommendations are incorporated and a new approach is established, yearly surveys and interviews given to the health professionals can be given to help determine where the program can be improved, the positives, negatives, weakness and strengths can also be recorded. Also questions to doctors pertaining to prescription writing can be given. For example, asking questions like, since using the PDMP has your prescription writing decreases or increased, does the PDMP help you