Starting this year, doctors and other health-care professionals who prescribe pharmaceutical drugs are now required to check a monitoring database designed to detect "doctor shopping" and other abuses.
Authored by State Sen. Ricardo Lara and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in September, SB 482 mandates all prescribers issuing so-called "Schedule II, III, and IV drugs" — such as painkillers and amphetamines — to consult California’s Controlled Substance Utilizations Review and Evaluation System (CURES) before prescribing.
The state has had a prescription drug monitoring program for the past two decades, and last January rolled out CURES 2.0, a modernized version of the original platform.
Angie Burton, executive director of the California Department of Consumer Affairs’ Osteopathic Medical Board, gave a report on the progress of CURES 2.0 at the board’s most recent meeting held Friday. Burton said that as of Nov. 15, more than 4,000 osteopathic physicians and surgeons have registered with the new platform, and between Oct. 15 and Nov. 15, CURES was accessed more than 12,000 times and ran approximately 24,000 patient prescribing reports.
The University of California at Davis and the state Department of Public Health are conducting a survey on controlled substance prescribing in California. Burton said the board has partnered with the organizations on the survey to help gauge the effectiveness of the CURES 2.0 system. Results will be presented to the board following the close of the survey, which is scheduled to take place at the end of this month.
CURES initially was launched in 1997 and is managed by the California Department of Justice. The effort to build an updated version started in 2013. The Department of Consumer Affairs said it will be decommissioning the previous version of CURES in March.