The Iowa Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) is vital to reducing and preventing prescription drug abuse and drug overdose. As a central depository of information on controlled substance prescribing and dispensing, a major role of the PMP is to make data available to authorized users. Beginning in late January 2019, as is mandated by Iowa Code 124.554(3), Iowa PMP information will be disseminated to authorized users via Prescriber Activity Reports (PARs).The PAR provides a health care provider with a prescribing history summary, including their ranking compared to the median of prescribers within the same specialty. The PAR also includes a summary of each health care professional’s prescribing history. The PAR is a tool that provides an opportunity for self-examination of a health care professional’s practice as it relates to their prescribing of controlled substances. The intent of providing a health care professional with relevant and accurate information is to constructively assist his/her controlled substance prescribing practices. Informing health care professionals of their prescribing behaviors relative to their peers may provide insightful, concise data that may assist with treatment protocols. The PAR is not intended to be an indication that the prescriber or his/her patients have done something wrong and will be for the prescriber’s information only.
PARs will be generated and distributed every quarter and sent only to health care professionals who have issued at least one Schedule II, III or IV controlled substance prescription during the previous six months. Each health care professional receives a PAR specific to their prescribing history. According to the Iowa Board of Pharmacy, there are nearly 18,000 registrants with authority to prescribe controlled substances in Iowa. The PAR categorizes each health care professional by specialty. The specialty group is determined using taxonomy codes maintained by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the health care specialty selected during the process of registering for a PMP AWARxE user account.
The PAR will identify the following metrics for each prescriber:
● Opioid related patient and prescription volumes
● Top 3 medications prescribed
● Prescribing percentages based on daily Morphine Milligram Equivalents (MME) of opioid prescriptions
● Patient percentages based on opioid duration of therapy
● Prescribing volume based on total MME of selected opioids
● Anxiolytic/sedative/hypnotic prescribing
● Patient volumes exceeding multiple provider thresholds
● Patient volumes receiving dangerous combination therapy
● PMP Usage
A Metrics Explanation document will accompany each PAR to guide with review and utilization of the information. A PAR frequently asked questions (FAQ) document will be posted at pharmacy.iowa.gov/iowa-pmp-awarxe before dissemination of the first round of reports. The FAQ will be updated as more questions are received.
If you have not already done so, please register for an Iowa PMP AWARxE account at iowa.pmpaware.net.
Questions on Prescriber Activity Reports can be submitted by email to pmp@iowa.gov.