Opioid prescription control is getting increasingly sophisticated and Tidewater’s Bayview Physicians Group is the first healthcare system in Virginia to try out new monitoring technology.
The new system is called NarxCare, and it is part of the state’s PMP, or prescription monitoring program, which is a database of prescription drug information.
NarxCare builds speed into the PMP, by providing both physicians and pharmacists with a quick summary of a patient’s prescription history, replete with visuals like graphs of drug usage, along with risk scores regarding a patient’s addiction potential.
“[Prescribers] can see at a glance whether they want to slow down [prescriptions],” said David Brown, the Director of the Virginia Department of Health Professions. He added that Bayview was the first to sign onto the system, and many other clinics throughout the state are lined up to do so as well.
NarxCare includes the patients’ medical history, namely information on potentially addictive drugs they are taking, such as stimulants and sedatives, Brown said. It also points out risky drug combinations, such as narcotics and benzodiazepines.
“It gives you a tool to show you if the person is doctor shopping or is already addicted,” Brown said. “It will tell you if prescriptions are being dispensed at different pharmacies.”
Part of state-wide strategy
The introduction of NarxCare is one of several strategies being deployed to help resolve the state’s opioid crisis, Brown said. In January, Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced a $3.1 million grant from Purdue Pharma to set up NarxCare in Virginia, according to a recent press release from the Virginia Department of Health Professions.
By 2018, they hope that NarxCare will be used by 18,000 prescribers and 400 pharmacies throughout the state. “As a result, in the coming years, Virginia should anticipate a drop in prescription drug overdose deaths,” the press release said.
The scope of the opioid epidemic in Virginia is sobering. Between 2105 and 2016, the number of people in Virginia who died of an opioid overdose increased by 38 percent, according to the health department.
There was a 175 percent increase in deaths from fentanyl, a particularly potent pain medication typically used with a sleep agent to produce anesthesia for surgery.
Also, for the fourth year in a row last year, drug overdose was the top reason for unnatural deaths in Virginia.
In 2014, McAuliffe signed an executive order establishing the Governor’s Task Force on Prescription Drug and Heroin Abuse.
“Something that came out of the task force has been a number of recommendations for how to improve the PMP,” Brown said.
Dr. Richard Coleman, the founder and medical director of the Coleman Institute, an addiction treatment facility in Richmond, said the PMP has made it much easier to track patients’ drug usage.
“We used to have people coming in all the time with a ‘bad back,’” Coleman said. “Now we can just look at the PMP and see.”
Coleman and Brown both said that many addicts actually started out with a legitimate issue for pain.
“When these pills are around, they can fall into the wrong hands,” Coleman said. Also, four out of five heroin addicts—a growing phenomenon—started out with prescription drugs.
“Hopefully [NarxCare] will decrease the percentage of Virginians who enter into the pipeline of addiction because of inadvertent prescribing,” Brown said.
Recently, the state’s medical and dentistry licensing boards revised emergency regulations on opioid prescriptions, discoverdentalhouston.com/online-pharmacy/ he added. The guidelines allow up to a seven-day drug supply for acute pain, and 14 days for post-surgical pain.
Addressing a nation-wide epidemic
Most states, Brown said, have some version of a PMP—which also allows providers to share information across state lines.
NarxCare, which was developed by Appriss Health, is being used in thirty states, said Ken Cassell, the vice president of business development at Appriss.
Appriss provides data-driven solutions to patient safety issues. “We’re the market leader in this particular arena,” Cassell said. “The data, when it’s collected, has been vetted in many steps to make sure it’s accurate.”
He added that NarxCare delivers clinical insight rapidly, which is important for time-strapped physicians.
What it provides, in a nutshell, Cassell said, is “an immediate awareness [of prescription history] through risk scores, visual graphics, and red flags. That’s extremely valuable in a healthcare setting.”
