I have not worked in retail/community for nearly four years. This weekend, I got to work in a BIG BOX store Rx dept. Not much have changed in this practice setting with the exception of NPLEX (National Precursor Log Exchange)… designed to track the sale of PSE .. to help prevent diversion in the making of methamphetamine. There are ~ 24 states that have signed up to this “national database”..
When you look at how this system works… you should questions the thought process and intelligence behind this whole system…
Here is my understanding of how the system works.. a patient/customer walks up to a Rx dept and asks to purchase a product containing PSE.. the pharmacy staff will ask for a “driver’s license”… if you want to believe that all “driver’s licenses ” are totally legit.. just Google “fake driver’s license” to see how many entities are willing to sell you the material and the know how to produce all the “fake ID’s” that you want…
The Rx dept staff keys in the number on the driver’s license presented… if this ID has ever been presented before.. the person’s information .. as entered the first time that the customer purchased a PSE product at any retail outlet in the states signed up with NPLEX… if a name “pops up” when the number is entered… confirmation bias.. kicks in for the Rx dept staff… most/many will not look at the information on the screen.. just if they are given the “OK” to sell the product requested. Some else has initially entered the information.. so it must be OK…
If the information does not show up when the number on the driver’s license is entered.. the Rx dept staff will dutifully enter the information contained on the driver’s license that was presented… … again confirmation bias .. kicks in… this particular driver’s license has NEVER purchased a PSE product within the states on the system… No sense of this sale is being part of a diversion process…
Since this system asks for which state the driver’s license number you entered is for… why doesn’t the system query the state’s BMV’s database and bring back the information on that database… with a picture… to validate if the driver’s license and the person presenting it are valid and one and the same?
This system is endorsed and promoted by The National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators who according to their website
(NADDI) is a non-profit organization that facilitates cooperation between law enforcement, healthcare professionals, state regulatory agencies and pharmaceutical manufacturers in the prevention and investigation of prescription drug diversion.
If this group did not endorse/encourage the system having real-time access to the various state’s BMV’s databases to validate .. and just endorsing/promoting the acceptable of just any piece of ID .. that appears to be a valid driver’s license… then it would appear that they may be more interested in the investigation of prescription drug diversion… and the job security that would entail… rather than the PREVENTION OF DRUG DIVERSION… which would happen if we only sold PSE products to people with validated driver’s license.
Of course, with today’s technology… we really don’t need access to the various state’s drivers license database… all we would need to do is attached to the driver’s license present for the first purchase… the customers left and right index finger print… and in the future.. all the customer would have to do is place their index finger on a “reader”.. like many stores use on their cash registers and/or pharmacy systems.. and the NPLEX database would check the print against other PSE purchases by a person using that particular index finger… I feel confident that index finger prints are much harder to forge than driver’s licenses…
The question is simple.. do we want to work at preventing diversion… or promote a “sell and chase” methodology of PSE diversion ? Right now.. it would seem to be more the later than the former is the path that we are going down…
Filed under: General dumb-ass problems
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