Opinion Piece: Long-Term Care Pharmacy Perspective on the Oklahoma Prescription Monitoring Program reporting requirement for DSP24 - Treatment Type

As more and more states address controlled substance abuse and the opioid crisis, Long-Term Care (LTC) pharmacies are feeling the urgency and need to be compliant with ever-increasing regulatory requirements. PDMP (Prescription Drug Monitoring Program) reporting guidelines vary by state, and regulations are often changing.

The Oklahoma Prescription Monitoring Program reporting requirements changed recently, affecting several fields of the ASAP 4.2a software format.

This change includes the mandatory reporting of the ASAP 4.2a field of DSP24 – Treatment Type, which has changed from “Situational” to “Required”.

While this particular change is for Oklahoma, many states are utilizing DSP24, so we’d like to provide an overview of this field and how to utilize it within FrameworkLTC.

What is DSP24-Treatment Type?

This field, labeled as “Treatment Type” is being used by several states to document the type of treatment for which an opioid or other controlled substance prescription has been prescribed.

The intent of this field is to differentiate prescriptions written for treating opioid dependency vs. those that are not. The field can also indicate reasons for therapy such as hospice, cancer therapy, or pain management.

Unlike other PDMP dispensing fields, DSP24 is more complicated than those that simply input a fixed value from the prescription (such as a date or name).

DSP24 requires selection of the appropriate comment using the judgment of the pharmacy user, and/or information provided by the prescriber.

DSP24 in FrameworkLTC

In order to accurately submit this field in FrameworkLTC, users will need to select the appropriate option from the Treatment Type drop-down box on the “Misc” tab in Rx Entry.

The options on this box display the DSP24 code values and their definition, enabling the user to select the appropriate value. If a Treatment Type value is selected, FrameworkLTC will submit the corresponding value in the Controlled Substance Export in the DSP24 field.

Due to the need for users to individually evaluate and select the appropriate field values, FrameworkLTC cannot suggest or pre-select the Treatment Type field to a default value.

Users will need to deliberately adjust the field value to select the option that best corresponds to the individual prescription.

FrameworkLTC is scheduled to support the submission and reporting of the DSP24 field value as indicated above starting in the upcoming September 2019 release of FrameworkLTC.

To know more about an immediate solution as a work around in the meantime, please contact FrameworkLTC Customer Support.