News
Florida finally gets a database to track pain pill abuse
Palm Beach Post
TALLAHASSEE — More than two years after lawmakers created it, a statewide prescription drug database will go live Thursday, sort of.
Pharmacists and dispensing practitioners must begin entering data for more than 100 prescription drugs with potential for abuse into the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, or PDMP. But doctors won’t be able to access that information before prescribing pain medications to their patients for at least another six weeks, according to state health officials.
The program is launching after narrowly escaping efforts to kill it earlier this year. Citing privacy concerns and other objections, Gov. Rick Scott and House GOP leaders, including Speaker Dean Cannon, wanted to stop the drug database from ever going on-line.
Even when they created it in 2009, lawmakers were so leery of objections to the database that they forbade state officials from using any tax dollars to create or maintain it. The foundation responsible for funding the database has collected $240,000 in private donations and $800,000 in federal grants, according to Department of Health spokeswoman Jennifer Hirst. But Hirst could not say how much has been spent on the database, estimated to cost about $425,000 a year to maintain.
It may take months, but advocates of the database, including the nation’s drug czar and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, hope it will help curtail the prescription drug dealing that has earned Florida the reputation as the pill mill capitol of the world.
