Legislation now before the House would renew federal grant funding for state prescription drug monitoring networks, but would demand more interoperability among the systems.
Thirty-three states have Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs), which are statewide databases for tracking records of dispensed controlled substances. Another 10 have provisions authorizing such systems.
Under a 2005 law, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration gives states grants for the programs. To be eligible states must track the prescriptions of most drugs with abuse potential and they must adhere to privacy, reporting and interoperability requirements.
On July 28, the House Energy and Commerce committee has passed H.R. 5710, which would continue the grant program, but would also have the states with grants set timelines for making PDMP data interoperable with adjacent states with grants. The federal government would monitor how they are doing.
The bill would also require the states to give the Department of Health and Human Services aggregate data with which to evaluate their programs. It would also permit non-identifiable, summary data to be made available for research.
A similar bill (S. 3575) has been introduced in the Senate and was referred to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP). Staff there indicate there are no immediate plans to take up the bill.
Congress is taking this step, among others, in the face of the prescription drug epidemic. The National Center for Health Statistics says the rate of unintentional drug overdose deaths has increased by five-fold in the last two decades, mostly due to prescription pain-killers.
In written testimony to the Senate Special Committee on Aging, Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), said, "Criminal activity does not respect state borders ... currently, information sharing is done on an ad hoc basis between states."
The Department of Justice has supported technology for a hub for the programs at the Ohio Board of Pharmacy. Ohio and Kentucky have shared test data and may start exchanging real data this year, the ONDCP head said. Other states should be able interact with the hub later, he said.
As with other authorizing legislation, future years will tell how much money the programs actually get. The bill authorizes $10 million to $15 million a year over the next five years.
However, the 2005 law did much the same and Congress did not fund it until fiscal 2009. It's received $2 million in fiscal year 2009 and in 2010.
A Department of Justice program, budgeted at $7 million this year, also helps support the programs.
