All pharmacies in the province are now using the Nova Scotia Drug Information System (DIS) to record all medicines purchased through prescriptions and over the counter and it may help reduce drug reactions and prescription drug abuse.
“The system was introduced to provide more information to authorized health-care providers of all prescriptions (a patient buys),” explained DIS program director Natalie Borden.
“The goal is the DIS profile will be viewed by other health professionals, allowing them to make better decisions and allowing information to be shared more efficiently between them.”
Before the DIS was put into place, pharmacists had the Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) to give warnings if people were possibly overusing controlled substances like opioids.
It only kept track of prescribed controlled substances. Tylenol 1, which can be bought without a prescription, or any drug in the benzodiazepine class, like Xanex or Clonazepam, were not tracked. Nor were other drugs like blood pressure or asthma medication.
This made it hard to see if someone was using too much Tylenol 1, going to multiple doctors to get the same type or class of a drug — called double-doctoring — or using medications that could cause an adverse reaction.
Dr. Robert Strang, chief medical officer of health for the province, said during a July 19 teleconference on the province’s new opioid strategy that the combination of the DIS and the PMP will help “make sense of tracking opioid prescriptions” which is essential to understanding the problem.
As of Oct. 31, 2016, all pharmacies in Nova Scotia had to be using the system. Customers now have to show their health card when purchasing drugs and their DIS patient profile is available for any authorized health professional to see. This could be doctors, pharmacists, dentists and nurse practitioners.
So far only pharmacists are required to use the system.
Graham MacKenzie is the pharmacist-owner of Stone’s Pharmasave in Baddeck. He thinks the DIS is an important tool.
“Since everyone is now on the DIS … I can just look and see what someone has gotten at different pharmacies without having to call the store,” he said.
“I remember 24 years ago, it was a long process when you had someone you thought might be double-doctoring. You had to call multiple stores in your geographic area to see if they had filled the prescription somewhere else … that wasted a lot of time for pharmacy staff.”
For him, one of the biggest advantages is being able to track Tylenol 1, which has eight-milligrams of codeine and is a drug some people use as a way to get a high when they can’t get a street drug.
“Tylenol 1, for one thing, is addictive. It doesn’t take many bottles of Tylenol 1 before you want to come back for more,” he explained.
The acetaminophen in Tylenol 1 becomes the danger when people are ingesting too much, because it can damage the liver and cause acetaminophen toxicity, which can cause death.
Dr. Raed Azer has been practising medicine in Cape Breton for 21 years. He is a big supporter of the DIS.
“It’s like you coming to me with a book of your medications and I can see it and you cannot hide anything. It will tell me that yesterday you received 10 of these pills and last month you received 100 of them,” he explained.
This isn’t the only reason Azer thinks the DIS is useful for doctors. Doctors can write prescriptions electronically through the system and any pharmacy in Nova Scotia can fill it. It also allows physicians to see if a patient didn’t fill a prescription.
“The doctor’s office is one thing. The hospital is another little island, not connected. The pharmacy is another one. To connect all these things together and have one access, one door, will make it safer when treating people,” he explained.
Not many doctors are on the system. Azer thinks it’s because it is time-consuming to use.
However, he believes when physicians see the benefits of it they will want to use it and that over time the system will be easier and faster to use.
“The system being set up is perfect. It’s beautiful to have it. The getting the information and putting it in is what they are working on and this will get from difficult now and time-consuming to easier and easier,” he said.
Source:-capebretonpost.c