Gov. Eric Greitens orders prescription drug monitoring program for Missouri

[TexasTowelie]

Missouri will no longer be the only state without a prescription drug monitoring program after Gov. Eric Greitens issued an executive order Monday creating one.

Greitens’ order directs the Department of Health and Senior Services to build the database, which will be designed to help identify suspicious patterns of prescriptions of controlled substances, including opioids. The announcement was made at the St. Louis headquarters of Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefits management company.

“Like the plague, opioids kill the young, the old, the healthy, the sick, the virtuous and the sinful,” Greitens said in a prepared statement. “There’s not a corner of our state that hasn’t been visited by this curse.”

Forty-nine other states use monitoring programs to identify people who acquire excess prescriptions for addictive painkillers and tranquilizers, as well as the physicians who overprescribe them.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article161759233.html