South Carolina Council Calls for PMP Participation to Reduce Prescription Drug Abuse

Physicians should be required to register with South Carolina’s prescription monitoring program (PMP) database, recommends Governor Nikki Haley’s Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention Council, a committee charged in March with creating a plan to fight the state’s prescription drug abuse problem. South Carolina’s PMP was established in 2008, but prescriber registration is voluntary, and only 21% have done so, reports The State. Governor Haley convened the council following a May 2013 report in which the state’s Office of the Inspector General called for more widespread use of PMP data to keep medicine out of abusers’ hands. However, opponents of mandated prescriber PMP registration argue that the database is cumbersome and difficult to use, and cited concerns of invading patient privacy.