Prescription Drug Abuse: 49 US States Combat with PDMPs - Essay Sample

Introduction

Most medical professionals believe that prescription drug abuse is a get-way activity to hard drugs. As such, prescription drug monitoring programs (PMDP) are practical assets used to battle physician endorsed medication to check for abuse and overdose. The PDMPs are consistently increasing throughout many nations as their impact gets more ingrained in the medical profession. Presently, the United States of America leads by example, as it has 49 states with PDMPs (Lyden & Binswanger, 2019). However, not all States have initiated the program. The State of Missouri does not have a prescription drug monitoring program, while St Louis County runs a different PDMP from the rest of the States (Lily, 2017). As such, the purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of PDMP programs on the rate of prescription drug addiction amongst people living in the United States of America.

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Background of the Problem

Lily (2017) stated that the State of New York initiated the first PDMP program in 1918. The plan was used by practitioners to screen solutions for hard drugs such as opium, codeine, morphine, heroin, and cocaine. The program required medical personnel to report any diagnosis related to the stated conditions within 24 hours. However, the significance of this activity was not felt by other states for twenty more years, up until the time California saw the importance of such a program and began its own in 1939 (Lyden & Binswanger, 2019). From this time till 1989, PDMPs were majorly paper-based activities. The State of Oklahoma transformed the programs by initiating electronic storage and transfer.

To date, diverse association components of PDMPs utilize data from medication stores and purchaser protection workplaces. Parts of prosperity, law execution, and drug abuse protection institutions provide data to curb the spread of prescription drug abuse by utilizing the PDMPs to capture data. The CDC Injury Center reported that the PDMPs are the most active state-level intervention measures to monitor the prescription drugs in clinical practice ("PDMPs …", 2020). On the same, the program has generated remarkable results as witnessed through the reduction of States’ admission of substance abuse patients as well as considerable changes in doctors’ and patients’’ prescribing behaviors. In addition, select states are making it mandatory to seek consent from more than one medical professional whenever prescription drugs are being administered. As reported by “PDMPs …” (2020) fourteen states now need obligatory selection from the medical personnel.

Research Question

This research will focus on the impact of prescription drug monitoring programs on increasing or decreasing the rate of prescription drug addiction. To achieve this objective, the researcher will be investigating the factors that contribute to high or low rates of prescription drugs in the United States of America, as well as the potential impact of PDMPs towards mitigating the same. The research question, therefore, is; what is the effect of prescription drug monitoring programs on the rate of prescription drug addiction?

Literature Review

Patrick et al. (2016) considered PDMPs at the State level and effected to find out the more significant reductions in narcotic related overdose in States that observed PDMPs. Most States that the researchers evaluated had, at any rate, four medication plans. Furthermore, the programs refreshed medical data at any rate week after week. In an assessment of narcotic maltreatment uncovered through Medicare guarantee examples, Buchmueller and Carey (2016) stated that decreases in abuse-related cases within States significantly improved through the use of PDMPs. States that require recommending substances to counsel the database when giving solutions under specific conditions reported improved control towards the rate of prescription drug addicts.

The two investigations proposed that there are gains to be found in specific traits of PDMPs. The researchers did assess those projects with the most- restricting prerequisites for doctors and afterward assessed those projects that are less rigid in the prescriber. The practitioners desire to figure out which program structures are generally elective in decreasing narcotic abuse, and overdose demise is of vital importance towards reducing the rate of prescription drug addiction.

The research identified with PDMPs projects is still developing. Past assessments on prescription drugs monitoring programs show a different scenario—for example, the practice of endorsing conduct and patient wellbeing. In assessing doctor reaction to these projects, signs of database utility dominatingly originate from deliberate overviews used to check the rate of drug use for particular patients.

Utilizing a national agent review of suppliers, Rutkow et al. (2015) propose a few obstructions to doctor utilization of these databases, including difficulty exploring the arrangement of projects and the tedious idea of getting to the database. These hindrances may clarify low use by recommending doctors. In an unknown study given to prescribers in Connecticut and Rhode Island, Green et al. (2015) and PDMPs somewhat influence doctor conduct, specifically when the projects were electronically accessible.

References

Buchmueller, T. C., & Carey, C. (2018). The effect of prescription drug monitoring programs on opioid utilization in Medicare. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 10(1), 77-112. 10.1257/pol.20160094

Green, T. C., Bowman, S., Davis, C., Los, C., McHugh, K., & Friedmann, P. D. (2015). Discrepancies in addressing overdose prevention through prescription monitoring programs. Drug and alcohol dependence, 153, 355-358. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2015.05.009

Lilly, J. (2017). Should Missouri Have a Statewide Prescription Drug Monitoring Program?. Missouri Medicine, 114(4), 231. [PDF] http://www.msma.org/uploads/6/2/5/3/62530417/pro_con_pdmp.pdf

Lyden, J., & Binswanger, I. A. (2019, April). The United States opioid epidemic. In Seminars in perinatology (Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 123-131). WB Saunders. https://doi.org/10.1053/j.semperi.2019.01.001

Patrick, S. W., Fry, C. E., Jones, T. F., & Buntin, M. B. (2016). Implementation of prescription drug monitoring programs associated with reductions in opioid-related death rates. Health Affairs, 35(7), 1324-1332. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.1496

Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) | Drug Overdose | CDC Injury Center. Cdc.gov. (2020). Retrieved 25 June 2020, from https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdmp/states.html.

Rutkow, L., Turner, L., Lucas, E., Hwang, C., & Alexander, G. C. (2015). Most primary care physicians are aware of prescription drug monitoring programs, but many find the data difficult to access. Health Affairs, 34(3), 484-492. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2014.1085