BACKGROUND: New Mexico’s Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) was established in 2005 to provide a tool for clinical decision making regarding controlled substances, while helping reduce “doctor shopping” and drug diversion, problems in New Mexico (NM) and nationally. Unsolicited reporting of PMP data to prescribers has been identified as a best practice by the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program Center of Excellence (Brandeis University).
METHODS: In November 2016 Prescriber Feedback Reports (PFR) were sent electronically to all NM healthcare providers in the PMP with an active e-mail account who had 20 or more patients for whom they prescribed controlled substances. The cover letter sent with the PFR requested participation in an online survey. Survey questions focused on the usefulness and accuracy of the report, and asked for feedback regarding specific elements included in it. Respondents were asked to identify their practice category (licensing board), specialty, and the county or counties where they practiced, to assess whether survey responses represented more than one group of prescribers.
RESULTS: From November 8 to December 16, 2016 we received 336 survey responses (11.5% of 2,294 recipients), with good geographic representation. The proportion of survey responses from 11 different provider types tracked the overall proportion of reports sent, with nurse practitioners slightly overrepresented among respondents, and dentists underrepresented. Medical doctors made up 63% of both survey recipients and respondents. Overall responses received were strongly positive. Even among the subset of those who rated the data in their PFR “not very accurate” or were not sure about its accuracy (14.3% of total), a majority (70.8%) considered the PFR itself either somewhat useful, useful or very useful. Stratification of results by licensing board (medical board versus others) and by large (urban) counties versus smaller, more rural ones revealed no statistically significant differences between groups. Respondents from smaller population counties rated the usefulness of the PFRs more highly than those in more urban areas, although in both groups a clear majority found the reports useful or “very useful” (85.0% versus 74.1%).
CONCLUSIONS: Survey results support the value of making PMP data available to clinicians in PFR format and providing comparison with peer prescribers. However, while overall response to the PFRs was positive, changes to the PFR process will be made (e.g., inclusion of additional specialty areas to improve the validity of comparisons to other NM prescribers). In addition, free responses indicate areas for improvement in prescriber education around PMP use.