States get feds' help with Rx monitoring

More than 90% of all physicians soon could be practicing in a state with prescription monitoring.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. Nov. 1, 2004.

In a federal budget totaling $2 trillion, a $16.5 million program might seem like a drop in the ocean. To cash-strapped state governments, however, receiving their share of this pool of money has made a huge difference in getting programs to monitor prescriptions for drugs of potential abuse up and running.

The first such program was started by California in 1939, but the rest of the country was slow to follow suit. Now the roster of monitoring states is rapidly growing, thanks in part to the federal prescription-monitoring grant program that has allocated $16.5 million between 30 states over the last three years.

"While it took 60 years to establish the first 15 programs, seven new programs will be up and running just three years after the Harold Rogers prescription drug-monitoring program was created," said Leslie Cupp, communications director for U.S. Rep. Harold Rogers (R, Ky.), the congressman who started the program. "That's nearly a 50% increase attributable to this program."

The competitive grant program directs money to states for starting or planning new programs or for enhancing existing ones. The grants cannot be used to operate a program.

In Rogers' home state, there is support for the Kentucky All-Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting, which was started in 1999. "We have resolutions and policy to expand the program when revenue becomes available," said Marshall E. White III, Kentucky Medical Assn. director of public and governmental relations.