North Carolina Joins Interstate PDMP Data Sharing Platform

North Carolina state leaders have signed an agreement to share prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) data across state lines via PMP InterConnect, a PDMP interstate data sharing platform from Louisville, Ky.-based Appriss Health.

By joining PMP InterConnect, users of North Carolina’s Controlled Substances Reporting System (CSRS) will now be able to obtain multi-state information about their patients’ controlled substance prescriptions. In all, 45 states, including all of North Carolina’s border states, have now agreed to share data via PMP InterConnect, and hundreds of millions of transactions will happen on the platform this year, according to officials.

“This new data available through the CSRS portal gives clinicians the ability to get additional information on their patients’ opioid prescription histories and make more informed decisions before prescribing an opioid,” North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy Cohen, M.D., said in a statement. “I encourage all providers who prescribe controlled substances to register with the CSRS portal and use it.”

Since their inception, PDMPs have proven to be effective in combating prescription drug abuse, misuse, and abuse on a local level. However, the issue of interstate data sharing was an often-cited priority that was not addressed.

The use of PMP InterConnect to share data has grown significantly from supporting a few thousand interstate transactions in 2011 to supporting more than 15 million transaction per month today. In collaboration with the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP), Appriss Health built and operates PMP InterConnect. PMP InterConnect is governed by a Steering Committee, comprised exclusively of the 45 representatives of the PDMPs that are participating in the platform, the company’s officials noted.