Feb. 2, 2012 — FRANKFORT - Under provisions of a bill filed Thursday in the General Assembly, pain clinics would have to be owned by licensed health care practitioners and any health care professional who prescribes controlled substances would have to register with and utilize the state’s electronic tracking system.
That system, KASPER (Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting), would be moved from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to the Office of the Attorney General, which also would establish prescribing thresholds. When those limits are exceeded, prescribers would be reported to licensure boards or the Kentucky State Police.
The bill is sponsored by House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, who worked with Gov. Steve Beshear and Attorney General Jack Conway on its provisions. Stumbo said Thursday he expects bipartisan support from the bill and expects similar legislation from the Senate.
Stumbo said the “battleground” in the war on prescription drugs keeps shifting. The former AG said the state effectively shut down online sales of the drugs but now “a number of doctors who are licensed by the (Kentucky) Medical Licensure Board have been prescribing these very addictive narcotics in an unethical and probably illegal manner.”
Stumbo previously sponsored legislation that allowed the KMLB to access data from KASPER to pinpoint geographic areas of over-prescribing and then initiate investigations. However, Stumbo has been critical of the board’s failure to utilize that power. Last fall, Stumbo grilled board members before a legislative committee about the lack of action against doctors who over-prescribe.
“Thankfully, KMLB has since become much more involved and hopefully, this legislation will give it and law enforcement even greater authority to find where abuse is taking place and stop it,” Stumbo said.
Only about one-third of prescribers and one-fourth of pharmacists had registered accounts with KASPER as of 2010. Stumbo’s bill would require all to register and to run reports on new patients and periodic reports on existing patients. Prescriptions would require physical examinations and reviews of the patients’ medical histories. Any prescriber convicted of drug-related felonies would suffer a mandatory license revocation of five years minimum and any suspended license in another state would bar licensure in Kentucky.
Physicians or other prescribers would be limited to 30-day supply amounts in prescriptions and coroners would be required to determine the exact cause of death in any suspected overdose fatality. County and commonwealth’s attorneys would also be authorized to view KASPER reports if engaged in drug investigations, something requested by prosecutors.
Stumbo said the medical licensure board must “police its own profession and help us get rid of these rogue doctors that are killing Kentuckians every day through these over-prescribing clinics that many call pill mills.”
It’s estimated that more people die in Kentucky each year from drug overdoses than from motor vehicle accidents and lawmakers have increasingly sought ways to deal with the problem of painkiller abuse. In the Senate, Sen. Jimmy Higdon, R-Lebanon, has a bill that would also require pain clinics to be owned by physicians.
But some senators on the Judiciary Committee, notably Sen. Ray Jones, D-Pikeville, and Sen. Brandon Smith, R-Hazard, want Higdon to broaden and strengthen the bill to include some of the provisions like those in Stumbo’s.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Tom Jensen, R-London, said Thursday he hadn’t seen Stumbo’s bill yet, but had asked Higdon to work with Jones and Smith to incorporate some of their ideas in his bill. Higdon said earlier he was willing to do that.
Stumbo said he hopes the two bills can be combined into a “comprehensive” bill to deal with the “prescription drug scourge.”
Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.
