Sarasota law enforcement officials want every single provider who prescribes pain pills in Florida to start using a statewide database that tracks prescriptions. They say it is not being used broadly enough, which makes abuse harder to spot.
The Florida database is aimed at curbing the widespread abuse of pain pills and other prescription medication. It’s called the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP).
The program closely tracks who is getting what pills and how many times the individual is getting it.
Sarasota officials say they need more medical professionals involved for it to work more effectively.
Debra Kaspar, a Sarasota County sergeant, says that most doctors are on board to help crack down on abuse, but are hesitant to use the database for their own patients.
“We still have a little of that stigma,” Kaspar says. “People think, ‘well, it’s really not my patients because I am in a field where I only prescribe six pills, 12 pills, or a couple pills for short term use—you know, 72 hours. So, therefore, those types of doctors—your psychiatrists, your dentists, your walk-in clinics, don’t necessarily feel they need to access PDMP because of the small amount they are prescribing.”
Officials recently discovered that a patient was able to obtain 178 prescriptions for pain pills from 56 different medical providers over the past two years.
