Missouri House passes bill for opioid prescription tracking

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The Missouri House has passed a bill to create a monitoring program to track prescriptions for opioids.

House members voted 103-53 Monday in favor of the bill. It now heads to the Senate, where past efforts have met pushback.

The legislation would allow doctors and pharmacists to see which prescriptions patients are receiving. The goal is to identify patients who are receiving multiple prescriptions for painkillers and address potential opioid misuse.

Missouri is the only state without a statewide prescription drug monitoring program.

Critics in the House raised concerns personal health information in a government database could be hacked and questioned its effectiveness in fighting the opioid epidemic.

A panel of senators last week failed to pass a similar proposal out of committee.