In its first week of voting since it took on a greater role in fighting the opioid crisis, the state House on Wednesday approved a measure to extend the life of a prescription database considered vital to that fight.
The bill also was the first to pass the House under the lead sponsorship of Republican Rep. Ann Flood, a first-year lawmaker from Northampton County.
The measure to extend the life of the database through 2028 — it has been set to expire in 2022 — passed by unanimous vote and will go to the Senate for consideration.
The database gives doctors, pharmacists and other medicine prescribers access to a patient’s prescription medication history, allowing them to see potential warning signs of abuse. Flood said its main benefits are preventing so-called “doctor-shopping” and “pharmacy shopping,” in which substance abusers try to get multiple drug prescriptions filled by going to several doctors or pharmacies.
Flood called the vote an example of bipartisanship in the face of the opioid crisis.
The state Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs has said the state is on pace for a “record-breaking year” in terms of drug deaths. The state’s previous largest yearly total was 5,403 deaths in 2017.
Moving the Flood bill was among the first actions on the crisis taken by lawmakers since Gov. Tom Wolf’s long-running opioid disaster declaration — first made in January 2018 — ended on Aug. 25.
The declaration ended after voters in May opted to put limits on the governor’s disaster-declaring powers. Wolf, a Democrat, asked lawmakers to return to Harrisburg in late August to extend the declaration, but Republican legislative leaders declined.
“We didn’t feel like it was doing anything,” Flood said of the declaration. “We felt we could get more done in the Legislature, writing pieces of legislation.”
The database — sometimes called the prescription drug monitoring program, or PDMP — may be the subject of more contentious debate in coming weeks.
A bill with sponsors from both parties would allow insurance companies for the first time to access the prescription database.
Two organizations representing medical professionals have spoken against the proposal.
“Information in the database is highly sensitive and limiting access has been an important element to the PDMP’s success,” said Claire Shearer, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Medical Society. “Granting PDMP access to health insurers, who have no law enforcement ability, could ultimately jeopardize patient care.”
Dr. Tiffany Leonard, president of the Pennsylvania Academy of Family Physicians, said it opposes opening up the database to insurers because it believes they already have access to the information through claims data.
The bill currently is in the House Insurance Committee. Its backers say it would help the state fight the opioid crisis by improving outreach to people with potential drug problems as well as improving anti-fraud efforts.
Morning Call Capitol correspondent Ford Turner can be reached at fturner@mcall.com
