More docs than ever use health IT for opioid prescribing

More doctors than ever are using health IT to combat the opioid epidemic.

The percentage of doctors who reportedly use both prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) and electronic prescribing of controlled substances (EPCS)—two types of health IT solutions—increased dramatically between 2019 and 2021, according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

PDMPs and ECPS both play a “critical” role in controlling powerful painkiller scripts, as they allow doctors to see the prescription history of their patients, according to a Jan. 19 ONC blog post.

What are they? PDMPs monitor scripts containing controlled substances. Each state has its own PDMP electronic database, so when a pharmacist dispenses a listed drug, they must record it in the database. EPCS describes the electronic transmission of prescriptions.

By the numbers:

• 71% of doctors said they used EPCS in 2021, with 62% saying they used it “often.”
• In 2019, just 37% of doctors replied the same.
• 78% of doctors said in 2021 that they checked their state’s PDMP before prescribing a controlled substance to a patient for the first time.

The ONC based its research on data from the National Electronic Health Records Survey, a nationally representative annual survey of office-based physicians in the US.

The big picture: “Seeing someone’s prescription history can let you know that the person might be taking another product, other drug, or a substance that’s contraindicated,” Tricia Lee Rolle, a senior advisor at ONC, told Healthcare Brew. “So in addition to the quantities, it’s also important to evaluate whether or not it’s appropriate to start therapy at all.”

Using ECPS could reduce the number of patients getting scripts for opioids. A separate ONC study from March 2021 found that mandatory EPCS use in New York State resulted in a nearly six percentage point decrease in powerful painkiller prescriptions.

Looking forward: The use of EPCS will only grow. On the first day of 2023, CMS began enforcing a rule that says providers must use electronic scripts for at least 70% of the controlled substances they prescribe to Medicare Part D enrollees.