Senate moves prescription control bill forward By AMANDA BELAND
[email protected] Thursday, March 22, 2012 CONCORD— A Senate Bill aimed at reducing doctor shopping and prescription drug abuse made its way through the Senate with ample bipartisan support. Senate Bill 286 would allow the New Hampshire Board of Pharmacy to contract with an outside vendor to establish a prescription drug database of all individuals using schedule II, III and IV prescription drugs in the state. The database would be accessible by all health care professionals, including emergency rooms officials, for use in determining whether there is a genuine need for the drugs and if those desired prescriptions were obtained by the same person elsewhere. According to Senator Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, prime sponsor of the bill, the database would allow doctors to discern “doctor shopping,” a term generally used to describe the act of receiving the same prescription medication from different doctors at the same time, either sell or feed an addiction.
Among the types of information the database would contain are patients’ personal information and current prescribed medications of a patient, and when each medication has been refilled. “We’re, of course, behind that bill for obvious reasons,” said Bob Pease, Director of Community Outreach for PeopleCare, a nonprofit arm of Paincare which is the leading pain management clinic in New Hampshire. According to Pease, PeopleCare work to advocate for the bill by educating the public on its benefits. Pease said the bill was very important because currently, New Hampshire is one of two states nationwide that does not have some form of a prescription drug tracking database. SB 286 would be the state’s first step in decreasing prescription drug abuse and death among its patients. The larger plan for the state, titled a “Call to Action: Responding to New Hampshire’s Prescription Drug Abuse Epidemic,” is a multifaceted approach to prescription drug abuse spearheaded by the New Hampshire Governor’s Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention. The bill was sponsored by 15 members of the Senate, including Bradley, and four members of the House of Representatives. The bill, which will head directly to the New Hampshire House, is expected to be received well among its members.
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