Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP)

By law, physicians now must set up an account with the Texas PMP, known as PMP Aware and check the PMP prior to prescribing opioids, benzodiazepines, barbiturates and carisoprodol. An account allows physicians to check a patient’s prescription history for information that indicates illicit activity, drug abuse, drug diversion, or doctor shopping.

Bamboo Health, the state’s PMP vendor, provides the software, NarxCare, which is integrated with the EHR so that physicians do not need to leave the EHR to query the PMP. NarxCare, is an analytics tool and care management platform that helps prescribers and dispensers analyze real-time controlled substance data from PMPs and manage substance use disorder. NarxCare automatically analyzes PMP data and a patient’s health history and provides patient risk scores and an interactive visualization of usage patterns to help identify potential risk factors. NarxCare is delivered to the EHR using PMP Gateway. That means authorized prescribers can access PMP data and NarxCare analytics within their daily workflow for clinical decision support. If your EHR is not integrated with the PMP, check with your vendor to find out when it will happen. If you do not have integration, you can still check the PMP via the internet through the PMP portal.

According to the Texas PMP website, to comply with the mandate, physicians must document in the patient's medical record that they checked the PMP.

When a patient’s record is accessed, some integrated electronic health records show only a patient score, rather than a full report. However, viewing the patient score alone is not enough to comply with the mandated PMP lookup requirement. To comply with the mandate, physicians or legally authorized delegates of the physician must review a full controlled substance history report for every patient, every time. The mandate applies to all outpatient and discharge prescriptions of opioids, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, or carisoprodol, regardless of the prescription duration. Patients diagnosed with cancer, being treated for sickle cell disease, or who are terminally ill under hospice care are exempt.