Drug abuse awareness and screening requirements for healthcare practitioners

Some states, such as Maryland, have implemented mandatory prescription drug monitoring programs to help address the opioid crisis. Such programs require both prescribers and pharmacists to not only report when controlled substances are prescribed/dispensed, but also query the database and evaluate the patient’s current and past prescription history. This query assists practitioners with clinical decision-making regarding possible adverse drug interactions; however, it also alerts the prescriber to any other prescriptions for controlled substances that the patient may have recently filled. This helps decrease a patient’s ability to “doctor hop,” getting multiple prescriptions from various practitioners and filling them at different pharmacies.

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