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After two years, Missouri's drug monitoring program on track to go live • Missouri Independent [1]

['Grace Kenyon', 'More From Author', '- June']

Date: 2023-07

Missouri’s statewide prescription drug monitoring program is on track, although no go-live date has been set, said Dean Linneman, the program’s executive director.

Guides and user manuals for dispensers and prescribers will become available four to six weeks before the program officially launches, Linneman said.

Missouri passed a statewide monitoring program in 2021 after years of debate over concerns for patient privacy. It was the last state in the country to approve such a program.

Prescription drug monitoring keeps a record of a patient’s prescription history, considered a key tool in mitigating harm caused by the opioid crisis. All dispensers, like pharmacies, will be required to record patient dispensation information for any Schedule II-IV controlled substances.

Julie Miller, a family nurse practitioner and director of clinical faculty practice for the MU Sinclair School of Nursing, knows firsthand that this program will be a useful tool.

“These dangerous drugs are sometimes necessary,” Miller said. “However, (drugs prescribed in) larger quantities, over longer durations and prescribed by multiple people, are unsafe for patients. So we need prescribers to have greater insight into that information.”

Miller is a member of the state’s Joint Oversight Task Force, a team with representatives from the Board of Registration for the Healing Arts, the Board of Pharmacy, the Dental Board and the Board of Nursing.

Linneman, who works with the task force, said they are taking every precaution to protect patient privacy.

One of the major steps in establishing a statewide drug monitoring program has been choosing a vendor to safeguard the data and make it available to medical providers. The task force selected Bamboo Health, a health care technology company based in Kentucky that is already affiliated with programs in 44 other states.

The other part of the process is transferring data from the pre-existing PDMP run by St. Louis County. This PDMP launched in 2017 and already provides information for 85% of the state population and 94% of providers.

This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian. It can be republished in print or online.

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[1] Url: https://missouriindependent.com/briefs/after-two-years-missouris-drug-monitoring-program-on-track-to-go-live/

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