Pubdate: Sat, 01 May 2004
Source: Orlando Sentinel (FL)
Copyright: 2004 Orlando Sentinel
Contact:  http://www.orlandosentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/325
Author: Mark Hollis, Tallahassee Bureau

PRIVACY FEARS KILL FLORIDA PRESCRIPTION DATABASE

But Health Officials Got More Power To Fight Medicaid Fraud And 
Prescription Abuse

TALLAHASSEE -- Worries about patient privacy drove Florida legislators 
Friday to kill a bill calling for a prescription-drug database.

But lawmakers agreed in a separate bill to give state health officials more 
powers to fight prescription-drug abuse and Medicaid fraud.

The Florida House approved the second measure (SB 1064) and sent it to Gov. 
Jeb Bush. It gives the Agency for Health Care Administration new authority 
to get more information about medical diagnoses before authorizing Medicaid 
payments.

The measure gives the state the ability to ban doctors from the government 
insurance program if they are prescribing too much medicine. And anyone 
convicted of defrauding Medicaid also could be denied benefits for a year 
or longer.

The wide-ranging measure stems from the work of a select subcommittee set 
up in response to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel series "Drugging the 
Poor." The series found that less than 3 percent of the state's medical 
professionals prescribed more than two-thirds of the narcotics and other 
dangerous drugs, and that some of these doctors had multiple patients die 
from pill overdoses.

Bush praised lawmakers for passing the bill but called lawmakers' rejection 
of the drug-database plan (HB 397) "a big disappointment." He said the 
Legislature missed an opportunity to create a powerful tool for stopping 
drug overdoses.

The database proposal was in response to 3,324 prescription-drug- overdose 
deaths in Florida last year, as well as investigations about abuse of 
prescription drugs by the Orlando Sentinel and the Sun- Sentinel.

The system would have allowed doctors, designated medical assistants and 
pharmacists to look up online the pharmacy records of patients age 17 and 
older to ensure they haven't been shopping around for multiple 
prescriptions. The records monitored would include potentially addictive 
drugs, such as Xanax, Valium and the painkiller OxyContin.

The House debated the drug-database idea but failed to bring it up for a 
vote. Only a few lawmakers spoke in favor of it, but Democrats and 
Republicans alike said they were opposed.

"This goes far in violation of [constitutionally protected] liberties," 
said Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach. "It has some advantages, but we'd have 
to accept some other deprivations of liberty that I don't think we should 
tolerate."

Bush allies in the House said lawmakers weren't fully considering the 
limitations that would be placed on accessing the prescription data.

To help make the legislation more palatable to lawmakers, Purdue Pharma 
Inc., the manufacturer of OxyContin, had agreed to negotiate with the state 
about paying the costs for the database. Analysts say it will cost about $2 
million to develop and about $2.8 million a year to run.

"We've made a big financial mistake," said Rep. Gayle Harrell, R- Stuart. 
"We're losing all that money from Purdue Pharma."

Mark Hollis can be reached at 850-224-6214 or  ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart