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South Dakota News: Prescription Drug Monitoring Program
Published in the July 2010 South Dakota State Board of Pharmacy Newsletter
During the most recent legislative session a new law was passed establishing a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) in South Dakota. This law places the responsibility for implementing and operating this program with the Board of Pharmacy. Representative David Lust of Rapid City, SD, provided the leadership in drafting the bill and gaining legislative support. The law provides for an advisory committee made up of prescribers, dispensers, and other stakeholders to provide advice and make recommendations to the Board regarding how to best use the program to improve patient care and foster the goal of reducing misuse, abuse, and diversion of controlled substances. Board of Pharmacy staff will be drafting administrative rules to define the details of the program within the authority and mandate of the law. As the rules are developed they will be available on the Board’s Web site. The Board encourages pharmacists to comment on the rules prior to the public hearing.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been a long time proponent of PDMPs due to the proven effectiveness in curtailing the diversion and abuse of controlled substances. The PDMP involves the exchange of health information. Pharmacies will be submitting prescription drug utilization data to the program. Data submission will be mandatory for all pharmacies and dispensers who provide controlled substances to South Dakota patients. Data will be collected online via an interface data dump (like online insurance adjudication). The information will be transferred to the secure database.
Prescribers and pharmacists will access this information for the care of their patients. The program is not intended to be used to target subjects for investigation, but rather to identify illegal activity such as prescription forgery, indiscriminate prescribing, and to deter “doctor shoppers.” Health care providers will have access to review the data online through a secure server once the data has been collected, but are not required to access the database prior to writing or dispensing a prescription.
According to other states, the implementation period will take about one year. The Board anticipates that the program will be operational by July 1, 2011. Executive Secretary Ron Huether has submitted a request to the United States Department of Justice – Bureau of Justice Assistance – Harold Roger’s PDMP Implementation Grant. If the Board is successful in obtaining the $400,000 grant, the program will be funded through September 30, 2012.
Staffing for the program will include a part-time pharmacist to serve as PDMP director and a full-time clerical/technical associate to perform day-to-day data review and provide responses to inquiries. The Board will contract with a vendor that currently provides data collection and storage services to existing programs in other states. The PDMP director will be responsible for designing educational materials for health care providers and the public. The materials will include details of the PDMP and how prescribers and dispensers can use the information to provide better patient care. The director will provide face-to-face education to prescribers and dispensers around the state.
