What Are Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs)?
PDMPs are in place to assist law enforcement in the collection and analysis of data related to controlled substances through a centralized database administered by an authorized state agency. Data provided by the PDMPs assists law enforcement in identifying and investigating activities related to the illegal prescribing, dispensing and procuring of controlled substances. States that have implemented PDMPs are able to collect and analyze prescription data much more efficiently than states without such programs, where the collection of this information requires the manual review of pharmacy files, a time-consuming and invasive process. Some PDMPs allow physicians to access data and review patients’ prescription drug histories. Providing the medical community access to this data allows physicians to work together to eliminate doctor shopping. Some state programs proactively notify physicians when their patients are seeing multiple prescribers for the same class of drugs. This assists heal
