By David Bucciferro and Katelyn Fontaine
EHRA Opioid Crisis Task Force

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Volunteers on EHRA’s Opioid Crisis Task Force have made great strides in the past year in our efforts to identify the policy changes and adoption patterns needed to maximize the capacities of health IT to combat the opioid crisis.
From the start, our focus has been, What do providers need from technology to support their efforts in the opioid crisis?
When we began our work in early 2018, we were surprised to find that there was no comprehensive source for the state-specific policies and standards surrounding prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) and electronic prescribing of controlled substances (EPCS). So, we set out to create our own.
State by state, we collected data, including timeframes for reporting controlled substance prescriptions to PDMPs, what data is collected, which professionals are able to access PDMP information, if and when information can be shared across states, and any limits on retaining PDMP data within an EHR.