America’s opioid epidemic continues to strike the country with alarming force, with some projecting it could claim the lives of as many as 650,000 Americans over the next decade.
The stories describing the devastating effects of this crisis on people and in some cases entire American towns are even more harrowing than the statistics.
There has been significant debate within both the public and private sectors on what can be done. One of the first orders of business should be to understand how to best halt prescriptions that are not legitimate.
As CEO of AmerisourceBergen, one of the largest pharmaceutical distribution companies, I can assure you that we spend a great deal of time and resources trying to identify ways to keep medicines from reaching the wrong hands. Given that distributors are responsible for helping to deliver physician-prescribed medications to pharmacies, we have a unique perspective into how this supply chain works — and the ways it can be subverted by bad actors. What would be most effective is better collaboration, coordination and cooperation between the Drug Enforcement Administration, its registrants and distributors.
Each time a distributor ships an order of an opioid-based medication, a detailed report is sent to DEA including the quantity, type and receiving pharmacy. As multiple distributors may be shipping opioid-based medicines to a pharmacy, the next step, in theory, would be for distributors to perform a “cross check” to determine the total volume of opioids the pharmacy is receiving from all distributors.
In practice, however, the DEA keeps this data to itself. This practice prevents distributors from having full visibility into whether the order from the pharmacy should be flagged for investigation.
As a result, a potentially valuable checkpoint is squandered, enabling many orders that do not raise flags when considered in isolation — but could be potentially suspicious when seeing the whole picture — to go unreported.
In a recent Washington Post/60 Minutes story, former DEA officials looked past this shortcoming, suggesting that, in an effort to maximize profits, distributors are delinquent in reporting and stopping suspicious orders. This is false. AmerisourceBergen, for one, has stopped tens of thousands of suspicious orders since 2007, with the help of sophisticated algorithms and data analytics.
What could make efforts most effective would be increased transparency and visibility through sound policy.
This could be achieved if DEA took the step of sharing the central database all registered distributors report to with the companies whose data the system contains. This access would enable distributors to evaluate the full picture of any opioid order from a particular pharmacy.
Moreover, all opioid orders should be placed digitally through the existing DEA Controlled Substance Ordering System (CSOS). By requiring this, we would ensure the confirmation of DEA registration. And with modification, we could even facilitate a system where the DEA flags orders as suspicious before they ever reach a distributor. In doing so, we can return the focus on law enforcement to the enforcement agency itself.
People are rightfully demanding action on this tragic issue. We must push forward practical solutions that can yield results in the near term on opioids. A more cohesive, connected and transparent system will be the most effective way to allow distributors to better combat the diversion of opioid-based medications.
Steven H. Collis is chairman, president and chief executive officer of AmerisourceBergen, a Pennsylvania-based drug wholesale company. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.