Colorado law requires that all prescribers have and maintain an active Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) account as a condition of licensure, and further, that they check the PDMP prior to issuing any prescriptions for either Opioid or Benzodiazepine medications for their patients. In the spring of 2022, the Office of the State Auditor determined that “PDMP checking rates are much lower than expected or desired” and that “DORA (the Boards of Medicine and Pharmacy) increased enforcement of PDMP checking requirements under Colorado law.”

As we all know, PDMP checking takes time, and is not conducive to clinical workflow.  The state of Colorado has heard this, and created two related opportunities to get the PDMP integrated into providers’ Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, AT NO COST TO THEM, to make it easier to do PDMP checks as the law requires:   

(1) DORA has created a funding mechanism for “Integration Vendors” to help practices get their EHR connected to the PDMP, and the cost of that work is billed to the state, by the vendor (no cost or application process for the provider/practice);  and 

(2) Medicaid (HCPF) has created a subsidized license program for their Prescriber Tool, which includes the PDMP checking and analysis program OpiSafe (a tool that pulls PDMP data, other data, and merges it for easy viewing; and documents that practices did their required PDMP checking), and the cost of the software is paid by HCPF for a period of one year (then the practice, thereafter, at an affordable rate).

Colorado Medical Society would like to make physicians aware of this opportunity, and if physicians/practices are interested in this completely no cost program to get their EHR connected to the Colorado PDMP, asks that you email OpiSafe directly by Jan 2, 2024 with the following information:  

Email to:  Marybeth@opisafe.com
Re:  PDMP-EHR Connection Opportunity
Practice Name: _____________________________
Number of prescribers (who need to be able to check PDMP): _____
Name of EHR system: ________________________
Accept Medicaid clients (yes/no):   _____

This response does NOT obligate you to participate, or to continue to use the free connection and software after the one year paid period (you may use it for a year, and then decide if you want to continue or not). OpiSafe is endorsed by Colorado Medicaid, and used by many major health systems in CO (SCL Health, Denver Health, Children’s Hospital Colorado, etc.) and many smaller hospitals and clinics.   You may reach Mary Beth Savory at OpiSafe (marybeth@opisafe.com) for a system demo or with any questions you may have about this opportunity.

Thanks for your interest, and we hope this will help you attain simple, consistent compliance with Colorado’s PDMP checking requirements!