I have just spend my afternoon at a large county RPH Association seminar.. gotta get those CE’s. There was probably close to 100 RPH’s in attendance. Listening to some of the chatter in the room before and between sessions… there was seemingly a fair number of young PART-TIME WAG’s Rph’s… being moved around and only getting 32 hr weeks… and making comments about “losing a lot of RPH’s”.
Of course, this seminar was held in a relative new pharmacy school… I say “relatively new” is because there are only two graduating class pictures on the walls… the third class is getting ready to graduate and “flood ” the local market…
The first two presenters were from the state’s OIG office of the state’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services… the first presenter had a background in IT and the other was as PharmD..
This presentation was all about the state’s PMP… which has been active since the late 90’s…
The IT presenter focused the presentation on “data” and .. IMO.. some of the “data” was the pulling out some individual horror stories of drug abuse.. trying to give the impression that this is “the norm”.. rather that the exception… IMO.. I could pull the same/similar examples from the alcohol prohibition period in our country.. and how did we solve that?? REPEAL PROHIBITION !
The presenter thru out the impressive piece of data that the per-cent of the population that is abusing some substances has went from 3% to 5%… OK… so we keep fighting the war on drugs and harm the other 95% of the people who USE THESE MEDS FOR VALID MEDICAL NECESSITY ?
Another one of the presenter’s more salient points is “the cocktail “… consisting of HCD/Xanax/Soma… of course these is the same “cocktail” that many Fibromyalgia patients will/could be on… I guess that these patients… because of the medications they need… are automatically considered abusers… GIVE ME A BREAK !
Also according to this presenter … only 13 % of the data entries into the state’s PMP are “invalid”.. this state’s primary ID required is a SSN… and yet the it would appear that the “idea” of what SSN is “not valid” is a SSN that does not “appear” to be direct …like all 9 digits the same and those that a first grader could figure out is bogus… all others… not compared to the Fed’s SS database .. are considered valid…
I personally posed the question to the presenter why RPH’s was able to submit the data to the PMP rather transparently, yet it was rather laborious getting a report back… “we are working on that”.. I said the bureaucrats could mandate that the Rx pharmacy software companies provide a transparent means of submitting data to the PMP.. why couldn’t they just as easily mandate that the should provide a process that a pharmacist could simple push a function key on the pharmacy software system… when in the pt’s data file and get a request sent to the PMP… “well… things take time…”… keep in mind.. this PMP has been up and running for around 15 YEARS !
They have been collecting data for nearly 15 years … when in fact… only the last 3-6 months of data is really of any value.. trying to isolate … someone who is a abuser/doctor/pharmacy shopper.
Of course, one of the data charts presented… showed that < 2% of all inquiries to this state’s PMP… were from RPH’s… wonder why?
If anyone believes that we are fighting to win this war… don’t apply for a bureaucrat job… you will most likely be disappointed…
Filed under: General Problems
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