Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs: Does the Arizona CSPMP Provide More Information than Routinely Collected in an...

Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) have been implemented as tools to help identify misuse of prescription medications. There has been mixed data regarding the efficacy of PDMP, and physician attitudes towards it vary. In an inpatient psychiatric hospital, history of substance use, including prescription medications, and results of urine drug screens (UDS) are obtained during the admission interview.

The aim was to determine if the substance use history and UDS are sufficient to identify substance use as compared to information obtained by Arizona's Controlled Substance Prescription Monitoring Program (CSPMP) in an inpatient setting.

A prospective chart review was completed on all newly admitted patients to the behavioral units within a 30-day period to identify those that had substance use disorder. CSPMP records were checked for all subjects for patterns of misuse. The test results were not normally distributed, so non-parametric tests were chosen for analyses.

Of the 220 patients admitted, 127 patients had a substance use diagnosis. Out of the 127 patients, 67(30.5 %) were diagnosed with either opioid, benzodiazepine or amphetamine and stimulant use disorder. Of the 125 (56.8%) patients who had a substance use disorder, the substance abuse diagnosis had been made by the psychiatrist in the medical chart. CSPMP identified only 2 (0.8%) additional patients that were missed during the intake.

The CSPMP provided little benefit to improving substance abuse detection when compared with the clinical interview and UDS results. This is attributed to the comprehensive evaluation done during the intake.