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Saving lives is the purpose of drug database
Two months ago it was an idea presented at a board meeting. Now Nevada and Vernon County have established a prescription drug monitoring program that will go in effect this summer.
"This is proof that the people here are able to come together and tackle big issues," Alyson Harder, Heartland Behavioral Health Services CEO, said.
The PDMP is a hot topic in Missouri right now and this will help to "ensure that our hospital and the population of the area are not inundated with opioid abuse and misuse," Harder said.
"The statistics for Missouri are not good, and in southwest Missouri there continues to be a significant increase in emergency room visits due to overdose, misuse and abuse," she said.
"Our community is of course most concerned about the youth and the aging population -- those are the two groups that are impacted the most. As a group of concerned citizens, we've said this needs to stop," she said.
There have been people here, like Steve Russ, who runs the Celebrate Recovery program at the First Baptist Church, advocating for the PDMP for quite a while, and he has done a lot at the state level, she said.
There is currently legislation working its way through the Missouri Legislature, but it is not going to help, she said, adding that it is really not designed for what the PDMP is focused on, which is to allow providers to have information on everyone in the database.
Harder said that as a healthcare provider at Heartland, she thinks the PDMP will be invaluable in preventing providers from duplicating prescriptions.
Currently a physician is faced with the situation of seeing a patient, who may have visited another physician for a different ailment and was given a prescription for oxycodone, and then unknowingly gives the patient a second prescription for oxycodone or something similar.
"It's about education -- not about privacy," she said, adding the major focus is not on catching criminals.
"It's really about youth getting ahold of it from their parents and grandparents, who were unknowingly prescribed large doses of oxycodone. This is what we call purse shopping, where it's very lucrative for youth to get hold of these medications to sell.
"And when you talk to individuals within the school districts, they say there is not a day goes by where they are not dealing with this," Harder said.
With a PDMP that is completely preventable, she said.
"This truly puts Vernon County on the map in southwest Missouri," she said.
Rural areas across the country are struggling, and Vernon County has its own difficulties, "but what makes us so great is we can demonstrate we can come together as a community and we can solve problems," Harder said.
"We're very solution focused and that is what I love about our community. I can bring something to the table at a Healthy Nevada board meeting with all these people present -- that was less than two months ago. Now as of last week we have legislation and laws in Vernon County and Nevada that says we will have a PDMP.
"If something can happen that quickly and with a strength based model of growing this community, this is a great example of that," Harder said.
This is a perfect example of what we can do as a community. There was no bias, no agenda. Everyone felt we needed to do this for the community, she said.
"It helps our prescribers, the pharmacies and at the end of the day it's going to help those folks who just did not understand they are not supposed to take that huge batch of medication. -- 'I'm just following my doctor's orders.'
"They don't understand that and they end up either addicted or what's worse overdosed in the ER, potentially dead. That's what we want really to avoid," she said.
"It's not about privacy, it's all about health providers having information," she said.
"It has a trickle down effect to the criminal aspect -- we all like that, we truly do. But it is really about getting tools to the people we trust to take care of our citizens. And as a health care provider myself, I want all the tools I can have to do the very best I can for my patients. This is a tool I can have at my disposal that doesn't cost a dime, that's even better, that's a triple win in my opinion," Harder said.