Barriers preventing greater physician access to prescription drug monitoring programs

While most primary care physicians are aware of prescription drug monitoring programs, and many use them, a study in Health Affairs suggests there are barriers that are preventing greater use of these programs.

In this study, researchers conducted a mail survey of 1,000 practicing primary care physicians in 2014 to find characterize their awareness and use of these prescription drug monitoring programs, as well as their attitudes towards these programs.

Of the 420 physicians who responded to the survey, 72 percent were aware of their state’s prescription drug monitoring program, and 53 percent reported using one of the programs. 

Of the physicians who were aware of their states’ programs, 57 percent believed it had “greatly” or “somewhat” reduced abuse and diversion of prescription drugs, while 28 percent reported it reduced these practices “a little.”

While 61 percent of all physicians and 87 percent of those reporting that their state had a prescription drug monitoring program reported having the capacity to access the program’s information at their primary clinical practice site, the authors identified a number of barriers preventing greater use of these programs.

For example, the most common barrier was that information retrieval was too time-consuming, while other barriers included problems with ease-of-use and that some physicians had too few patients for whom the information was needed.

To promote physicians’ awareness and use of prescription drug monitoring programs, knowledge gaps and access barriers must be overcome,” the authors wrote. “Despite the ubiquity of these programs, our findings suggest that roughly one in four physicians in states with such programs remain unaware of their presence.”

They added that there are a number of ways the barriers to greater access of these programs can be overcome. For example, efforts need to be made to ensure that program data are presented in easy-to-use formats and aren’t too time-consuming to access.

In addition, they suggested that pharmacy boards, health departments and law enforcement agencies that manage these programs should streamline processes to improve ease of use and promote physician access. Further integration of of prescription drug monitoring programs into EHRs is also a way of overcoming some of these barriers, the authors wrote.

“These types of strategies have proved to be successful in a small number of states, and they hold promise for increasing the effectiveness of prescription drug monitoring programs in reducing prescription drug abuse and diversion,” the authors concluded.