Patients use ProPublica database to find painkiller prescriptions

Investigative news outlet ProPublica announced its database to track the prescribing habits of doctors has been used by some to find addictive painkillers.

Created in 2013, the Prescriber Checkup app is intended to increase transparency by allowing doctors, medical administrators, law enforcement and patients to compare drug choices and prescriptions. But ProPublica discovered signs that some were using the data to find doctors more willing to prescribe narcotics.  

The news outlet immediately added warning labels to web pages of narcotic drugs. Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica editor-in-chief, wrote an editorial that outlined changes to the app while defending its overall usefulness.

“We continue to believe that Prescriber Checkup provides significant and beneficial insights into prescribing patterns—insights that can help patients, practitioners, regulators and a variety of other users,” he wrote. “Doctors, the vast majority of whom want to do the right thing, have told us that this is the only place where they can measure their prescribing against colleagues in their specialty and state.”

ProPublica originally discovered the possible misuse of its website by tracking visitors to a section meant to help reporters identify doctors who were prescribing the most narcotics. Readership for the “reporting recipe” exceeded what was considered normal for reporters. Also, many visitors arrived at the Prescriber Checkup after searching for “doctors who prescribe narcotics easily’’ or “doctors that will prescribe anything.’’

The availability of such information is not the problem, according to Engelberg.

“This is not a new problem for journalists, or others whose business is providing or sharing information. In another era, burglars would read the obituary pages so they could target the homes of people who had just died,” he wrote. “More recently, terrorists have used search engines to find recipes for bomb-making or encrypted communications. Con artists have found new ways to perpetrate schemes through Facebook and other social media.”