If you haven’t paid your fees to keep your electronic health record (EHR) integrated with Texas' prescription monitoring program (PMP), the state’s PMP vendor may have deactivated your connection, in which case you’ll need to pay to reactivate it.
Bamboo Health (formerly Appriss Health) manages the integration, which gives you access to view the PMP report from within your EHR workflow. If you recently lost access to view the PMP within your EHR and want to reactivate, you can do so by emailing Bamboo and paying the outstanding invoice. Once payment is received, you should be reactivated within a week. (Bamboo says this only applies to prescribers whose integration has been discontinued, not to anyone who currently has integrated PMP access through their EHR.)
The state covered the licensing fees for integrated access in your EHR for two years beginning on Sept. 1, 2019. (Mandatory prescriber checks of the PMP before issuing four types of controlled substances began in March 2020). Effective Sept. 1, 2021, the state stopped covering that fee.
With state funding no longer available, Bamboo Health invoiced physician practices for the annual licensing fee to access the PMP through their EHR. Bamboo invoiced based on contact information provided when a prescriber first signed up for the EHR-integrated access.
Physicians do not have to pay to access the PMP but do have to pay for the EHR-integrated access. To use the PMP for free without the EHR, log into the state's PMP web portal to check a patient’s prescribing history as required by law before prescribing opioids, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and carisoprodol. However, doing so doesn’t deliver the PMP information via your EHR.
The following options are available to physicians who want integrated access:
- The basic service, known as PMP Gateway, allows integrated access to the PMP and costs $50 per prescriber per year. This service provides access to the controlled substance prescription data only.
- The cost for the add-on NarxCare risk scores, data visualizations, and analytics is an additional $250 per prescriber per year. You’ll still need Gateway access to have the optional NarxCare upgrade, making it $300 per year per prescriber.
Athenahealth EHR provides free integrated access for its users. Contact Bamboo if you would like to purchase NarxCare. Allscripts and DrFirst users will pay directly to those companies and will not receive an invoice from Bamboo.
Physician groups with enterprise arrangements may have access to reduced pricing per prescriber.
TMA continues to explore options for future PMP funding with the governor’s office, the Texas State Board of Pharmacy, and Bamboo Health.
Questions about prescribing and the PMP may be directed to TMA’s Health Information Technology Department by calling (800) 880-5720 or by email.