BILL NUMBER: S4482

SPONSOR: HARCKHAM
 
TITLE OF BILL:  An act to amend the public health law, in relation to
requiring practitioners who administer naloxone or another overdose
reversal agent to a patient in the case of a suspected or confirmed
overdose to report the administration of the agent to the prescription
monitoring program registry

 
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:

Directs that the department of health include information regarding the
administration of overdose reversal agents on the prescription monitor-
ing program registry.

 
SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS:

Section 1. Renumbers Subdivision 9 of section 3343-a of the public
health law as subdivision 10 and creates a new subdivision 9

Section 2. Establishes an effective date of January 1, 2021.
              

 
JUSTIFICATION:

The goal of this bill is to request that the NYS DOH develop and imple-
ment an advancement to the NYS Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) to
help prescribers identify patients that have had overdosed on either an
opioid or heroin.

The idea is to develop an alert tag in the PMP for prescribers so that
when they access the PMP for their patient's care they will be able to
identify if a patient had an overdose in the past. This data on over-
doses is collected by the New York State Department of Health since
Health Care Facilities licensed in New York State, under Article 28 of
the Public Health Law, are required to submit their inpatient and/or
outpatient data to SPARCS. Data such as ICD-10 codes are collected which
will identify all drug overdoses, opioid drug overdoses and heroin over-
doses. This information can be converted to help add an alert flag in
the PMP which prescribers will notice when prescribing controlled
substances. This alert will allow the prescriber to open up a dialogue
with the patient about the overdose and what modifications or therapies
can be considered to prevent an overdose in the future.

The bill would require all medical practitioners whom administer nalox-
one to report to the PMP within 72 hours of administration of the agent
the following information, if available:

*Name of Patient
*Address of Patient
*DOB of patient
*Time and Place of Administration

The result of providing this information is to assist practitioners in
identifying a patient who had an overdose and to open up an opportunity
for the patient and prescriber to have a discussion about treatment.

The inspiration for this bill comes from a study recently released by a
major commercial insurance plan, Optum. They identified almost 3,000
patients who experienced a nonfatal overdose between 2000 and 2012 while
taking long-term opioids prescribed for chronic pain not related to
cancer. Opioids include drugs like codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone,
hydromorphone, and tramadol. Just over 90% of these patients continued
to receive prescription opioids after the overdose. More than half got
the prescription from the same doctor.

Prescribers must have all the tools at their disposal to prevent, diag-
nose and treat drug addiction. It is incomprehensible that individuals
can narrowly avoid dying of an overdose and be back at their
prescriber's office acquiring a prescription for the item that almost
killed them. This bill will prevent senseless deaths and hopefully lead
those with addictions toward treatment and recovery.

 
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

2015-16 A.10656
2017-2018 A.2810/S.4374

 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:

None to the State.

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall take effect January 1, 2021.