CURES

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Tweaks to C.U.R.E.S. Database Reporting and Access

The Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System (C.U.R.E.S.) is a prescription monitoring program maintained by California’s licensed physicians, licensed physician assistants, licensed pharmacies, licensed pharmacists, and any other prescribing California health care professionals. On October 2, 2018, the California Department of Justice (DOJ) certified the mandatory statewide …

California’s Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System, or C.U.R.E.S. (CURES) for short, is a prescription monitoring program aggregating DEA Schedule II, II and IV prescriptions.  Maintained by the California Department of Justice and primarily used by physicians, podiatrists, dentists, physician assistants, optometrists, nurse practitioners, pharmacies and pharmacists, C.U.R.E.S. represents a massive, relatively…

Since late 2015, the Medical Board of California and the California Board of Pharmacy have begun to increase enforcement actions and penalties for perceived overprescribing of prescription drugs, particularly opioid drugs such as hydrocodone and oxycodone (Vicodin and OxyContin/Percocet).  High-profile celebrity deaths due to opioid overdose, coupled with rising addiction rates nationwide, have…

As I have written about before, the C.U.R.E.S. database was created and is maintained by the California Department of Justice to track the prescriptions of Californians.  The purpose of this database is ostensibly to detect patient prescription drug abuse and over-prescribing by physicians.  However, C.U.R.E.S. is a huge medical information database that is unprotected from unchecked…