Prescription drug abuse continues to be a national public health crisis

The new jersey prescription monitoring program ("njpmp") is an important weapon in new jersey's arsenal to combat the abuse, misuse and diversion of prescription drugs. Since becoming operational in 2011, a total of 52,483 prescribers and 7,940 pharmacists have registered for access to the njpmp, representing approximately 99 percent of eligible prescribers. To date, over 125 million controlled dangerous substance, human growth hormone and gabapentin prescriptions have been entered into the njpmp from more than 3,300 new jersey licensed pharmacies. Between 2018 and 2020, the njpmp integrated with the electronic health records ("EHR") systems of over 375 hospital systems, pharmacies, and other healthcare entities, representing thousands of locations across the tristate area, including some of new jersey's largest hospital systems and chain pharmacies. EHR integration facilitated over 1.2 million patient queries in 2018. Since then, that number has expanded exponentially: there were over 19.5 million patient queries in 2019, and over 48.7 million patient queries in 2020. The department of law and public safety and the new jersey division of consumer affairs are seeking funding in the amount of $1,400,000 to make the following five (5) enhancements designed to improve njpmp information, reporting, quality, and integrity which will allow for better clinical decision making by prescribers as well as further new jersey's efforts to prevent the abuse, misuse and diversion of controlled substances. Develop an investigation alert module; develop a njpmp reporting exemption module; create a public njpmp data dashboard; develop an interactive reporting module for the division's enforcement bureau; and implement njpmp programmatic enhancements.