State to get federal money for drug monitoring program
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Massachusetts will get federal money for a prescription drug monitoring program.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health will receive federal funds to bolster its monitoring of prescription drugs, part of a total $58.8 million in grants the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday to address the opioid epidemic.
The DPH was awarded $400,000 for implementation and enhancement of its prescription drug monitoring program, a centralized database that collects and analyzes information on the prescribing of controlled substances.
In August 2016, the DPH launched a new version of its monitoring program, which the department said last month has been searched more than 5 million times since its implementation.
A law change last year required prescribers to search the program -- called the Massachusetts Prescription Awareness Tool, or MassPAT -- before issuing a prescription for Schedule II or Schedule III narcotics, defined by the federal government as having a higher potential for abuse than other medications.
A total of 638,250 Schedule II opioid prescriptions were reported to the program in the second quarter of 2017, for a total of more than 37 million dosage units, according to DPH data released last month. About 292,000 individuals in Massachusetts received Schedule II opioid prescriptions from April to June 2017, and 250 people were tagged as "individuals with activity of concern" in that time period.
Nearly 60,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016, up from the 52,000 overdose deaths in 2015, according to the Department of Justice.
In a statement announcing the grants, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who made fighting opioids a focus of a speech he gave in Boston last week, said the country is facing "the deadliest drug crisis" in its history.
"These trends are shocking and the numbers tell us a lot – but they aren’t just numbers. They represent moms and dads, brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends," Sessions said. "And make no mistake combatting this poison is a top priority for President Trump and his administration, and you can be sure that we are taking action to address it."
There were 1,990 confirmed opioid-related deaths in Massachusetts in 2016 and 1,670 in 2015, according to the DPH.
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