Chapter 6: Databases and Data Warehouses

In a recent article in Business Week entitled: "California unveils prescription database to spot abuse", the author shares that with a new database online installed, the law enforcement will have a more advanced way of keeping track of what doctors are prescribing to their patients, and what the patients are picking up from the pharmacies. What I did not know before was that with one prescription from their doctor, people actually abuse the use of the prescription and visit multiple doctors to get multiple times the amount of drugs. With the database installed, a patient's information is stored into the online system and all the drugs that the patient is picking up is recorded and the amount that they are getting whether it be from multiple doctors or not. Each time a prescription is picked up under that name, it is recorded and let known to law enforcements. Thousands of pharmacies and doctors have signed up to join this effort but hundreds are still expected to join. With this new database installed online, law enforcements will be able to crack down on the drug abuse and also do it at a faster rate then before. California is the 26th state to join the online efforts in cracking down the abuse on the online database.

With more and more people being caught for the abuse, we as a state will be able to save ourselves quite some money. "If you took the dollars that were wasted on diverted and abused medicines in this country, it would come to billions of dollars a year".

This link to this article can be found here.