Database may stop Addicts from Doctor Shopping

Now there is a push to have the databases cross state lines

Last year, a state online drug database went into effect to stop addicts from doctor-shopping or making money selling drugs. Now there is a push to have the database cross state lines.

"The whole purpose of this is to have states communicating with one another," said Dr. Laxmaiah Manchikanti, chief executive officer of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians. "If you know a patient is abusing, a doctor isn’t going to give that patient a prescription any more."

The ability to treat patients and prescribing pain medications can be made difficult if doctors can not find out if patients went to other doctors for their prescriptions.

A national network migh have helped Michael Jackson’s physician better monitor the medication he was receiving from other physicians. Dr. Conrad Murray was charged with involuntary manslaughter in Jackson’s 2009 death. Murray told the police Jackson was uncooperative with Murray about his other medications. A coroner’s report said Jackson died from a mix of a powerful anesthetic and a sedative. Police have looked for information in three states to see if Jackson’s medical history was a factor in his death.

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, more American teens used prescription drugs than any other drug except marijuana.

Forty states have passed legislation to allow monitoring programs, but only 34 are operating. President Bush signed the National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act in 2005. With that more than $50 million has been earmarked to states for programs where doctors and other authorized users, like police, can view patient records.

The law aims to have a coordinated, cooperative national network, but there is no idea what the cost would be and a majority of the federal money has not yet been allocated.

Joanne Quirk runs the prescription monitoring program in Nevada. She believes that having access to databases in other states would help stop people from southern California and Hawaii come to Las Vegas or Reno for Vicodin or OxyContin.

The four-year-old program has grown to more than 225,000 patient requests in 2009 from about 155,000 in 2008. Most programs are voluntary, but Nevada requires physicians to check a patient’s drug history during their first visit.

"If we took it away the practitioners would have a revolution," Quirk said. "It’s almost like getting a lab tst, where the doctors are trying to figure out what is wrong with this person and whether they are trying to get drugs legally."