UNC Health Care makes checking patient opioid use a snap

Many physicians say a state database to check on prescription drug use by patients is too cumbersome to use, so UNC Health Care has found a way to make it much simpler.

Posted 11:07 p.m. Aug 2, 2018 — Updated 11:09 p.m. Aug 2, 2018

Kathryn Brown

, WRAL anchor/reporter

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — In an effort to combat the opioid addiction crisis, North Carolina last year ordered doctors to use a statewide prescription drug database.

But a WRAL News investigation found only about a quarter of physicians check the Controlled Substance Reporting System to see what opioids a patient has already been prescribed. Many physicians say it's too time-consuming – it takes 13 steps to log in and about five minutes per patient to check.

While hospitals and doctors across the North Carolina wait for the state to upgrade the system, UNC Health Care took matters into their own hands by integrating its electronic medical records system with the state database.

"I can now click one button that automatically launches a window that automatically identifies the patient of the chart I’m in and uses my credentials already to log me in and spits out a report within three or four seconds," said Dr. Vinay Reddy, a family physician and an assistant professor at the UNC School of Medicine.

Since launching the system in late June, UNC Health Care estimates doctors have saved nearly 250 hours – time that can be spent instead with patients.

"We’ve already had 5,000 reports run just this month by physicians in the month of July, so it’s being used a lot more," said Dr. Don Spencer, chief medical informatics officer for UNC Health Care.

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Spencer said the system is actually changing the dynamic between physicians and patients.

"Taking time [to access the prescription drug database] was a burden. Now, we can pull up the screen together, and we can look at the results of it immediately," he said. "It's not only an issue of finding patients that are misusing opioids but also patients that also don’t need the number of pills that we’re giving them."

A spokeswoman for the state Department of Health and Human Services said the database should be integrated into most physicians’ electronic systems by this fall.

While the state upgrade will take more than year to complete, UNC Health Care integrated its system within three months.

"By removing these barriers, they have really no excuse not to check the registry and see what information is in there to responsibly prescribe," Reddy said.

DHHS also is partnering with several chain pharmacies, including Harris Teeter and Walmart, to integrate the database into their systems, the spokeswoman said. North Carolina also has increased the number of states it shares prescription drug data with, from 13 to 23, including all surrounding states.

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