New Tool Helps PA Doctors Battle Patient Drug Abuse
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Too many patients are getting multiple prescriptions for narcotics by visiting doctor after doctor.
Beginning Thursday, doctors in Pennsylvania have a new tool to battle opioid drug addiction.
Physicians enter a name into a statewide data base to find out if that patient has recently been prescribed a narcotic elsewhere in the Commonwealth.
Dr. Jack Kelly, Chairman of Emergency Medicine for the Einstein Healthcare Network, says it should help doctors spot people trying to get prescriptions from many providers:
"The physician who is right in front of the patient has no way of knowing that. We don't know that they were just with the primary care doctor this week, and they went to another ER last week and they went to an orthopedic surgeon the week before and we never really knew that history."
He says this should help curb abuse:
"We know it makes sense for us to have this information. From what other states have learned that this clearly will recognize those patients who are actually being prescribed way more narcotics than are medically necessary."
Currently the data base only shows prescriptions written in Pennsylvania.
Missouri is now the only state without a drug monitoring program in place.