St. Louis County to help Columbia in setting up drug monitoring program
Officials with St. Louis County will be helping Columbia health care providers the next two months to join the county’s prescription drug monitoring program.
The Columbia City Council approved a user agreement with St. Louis County on Monday to participate in the PDMP. Columbia joins Jefferson City, St. Charles County, Kansas City and several other local governments in the program, now covering 46 percent of the state.
The unanimous vote by the council means pharmacists in town will need to be part of the program by April 25. Those businesses will need to enter who receives drugs on the federal Schedule 2, 3 and 4, and how much of that medicine they get within seven days of dispensing it. Those lists include painkillers like OxyContin and Percocet, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say are being abused more often and leading to more overdoses.
Eric Stann with the Columbia/Boone County Health Department said St. Louis County health officials will help pharmacies and medicine prescribers like doctors and dentists install the software used. The county partnered with Appriss, a Kentucky-based company, to establish the network with its program PMP AWARxE. The county will have a technical assistance line ready for people trying to get involved.
“Pharmacists and health care providers will begin receiving information from St. Louis County and their health department regarding the program,” Stann said.
The city is waiting to see if St. Louis County will receive a grant from the Bureau of Justice Administration. If so, the city would not have to pay for the first two years of participation in the program. If the county doesn’t get it, the city will pay more than $26,000 for its role in the program through 2018.
Stann said the department would next go to the Boone County Commission to consider adopting a PDMP ordinance. The county has 17 pharmacies that would join the program if approved.
Some at Monday’s meeting questioned the need to be in the program. Residents noted the rising rate of opioid overdoses and addictions rising around the country, despite their use of a PDMP. Missouri is the only state in the country without a PDMP that covers the whole state. Bill Morrissey, a pharmacist at Kilgore’s Pharmacy in Columbia, said he supported a statewide program, but felt the piecemeal approach happening in Missouri wouldn’t slow the spread and abuse of painkillers. Those in the pursuit of drugs to abuse could go just one county over to a pharmacy without electronic tracking to fulfill a prescription.
“We’re fishing with a net and we’ve got a hole in the net,” Morrissey said.
Mayor Brian Treece said after the vote Monday that the local passage of a PDMP would motivate smaller counties to push their state representatives to support the statewide program.
