"Drug addiction and opioid abuse are ravaging Amer

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The Opioid Crisis
More than 300,000 Americans have died from overdoses involving opioids since 2000. President Donald J. Trump has mobilized his entire Administration to address opioid abuse by directing the declaration of a nationwide Public Health Emergency.

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Dr. Dalton has
served as a Board member on such organizations as Blue Shield of
Pennsylvania, United Way, National Health Association, National
Association of Chain Drug Stores, and is one of the original
members and Directors of the National Council of Prescription
Drug Programs which is the organization responsible for every
prescription transaction technology platform in the United
States. https://www.twst.com/bio/david-l-dalton/

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Health IT Now and the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) — have embraced a nationwide, interoperable, and real-time drug monitoring program to stop fraudulent prescriptions before they reach the patient’s hands.

We’ve called it the Prescription Safety Alert System, based off the NCPDP Standards -based Model for PDMP: An Interoperable Framework for Patient Safety, but the name is much less important to us than the policy.

First envisioned in a 2016 NCPDP white paper, our solution would function as a facilitator that is run by the private sector under a contract with the federal government.

Importantly, the technology to do this is already exists. More than 20 years ago, NCPDP first developed its SCRIPT standard that paved the way for doctors to electronically send prescriptions to your pharmacy in real-time. More recently, its telecommunication standard wrote the rules of the road for how pharmacies communicate with patients’ insurance to instantly adjudicate claims.

Now we need to employ these tools to stem the tide of abuse by allowing clinicians to identify at-risk patients while ensuring access for those with a valid medical need, and we know it’s possible. Medicare Part D is using a similar system today, known as the “TrOOP” facilitator, to track out-of-pocket costs, making this a time-tested concept.

Under our plan, an alert system would instantly capture data each time a physician sends an electronic prescription for a controlled substance and each time a pharmacist seeks to fill an opioid prescription.

The private sector facilitator would use this information in conjunction with an algorithm to alert the prescriber or dispenser if a patient presents a risk — anything from a possible drug interaction to an individual who may have already filled a prescription moments ago at another pharmacy across the street.

The result? Clinicians have real-time information before prescribing a controlled substance. Moreover, the solution reduces the time clinicians spend trying to track down data and allows them to focus more time on patient care.

What’s more, with a recent study pegging the true economic cost of the opioid crisis at $500 billion a year, this solution can actually save taxpayer dollars, as physicians and pharmacists are empowered to catch problems before they become costly tragedies.

We have been hard at work championing this blueprint, and Washington is taking notice . Included in the White House’s new opioid plan released last week is a call for states to “transition to a nationally interoperable prescription drug monitoring program network” — a network like the Prescription Safety Alert System. https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/380592...oid-crisis

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