Is the Kentucky prescription reporting system useful in the care of hospitalized patients?

Patients who are physically dependent on prescription drugs often create clinical management problems during hospitalization. Identifying those patients who have prescription drug problems can be difficult at the time of admission, but the information of the Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting (KASPER) system can be useful clinically. The purpose of this study was to examine the value of the KASPER system in the management of patients admitted to an acute care hospital. A convenience sample of 58 hospitalized patients was evaluated. The patients' clinical and demographic data were abstracted from the medical record. The KASPER data were used to confirm the patients' history of drug use. In this sample, the KASPER data supplied additional, clinically useful information that was not available from the clinical history or screening toxicology from 30 (51.7%) of these patients. We conclude that the KASPER system has the potential to assist physicians in the care of hospitalized patients who take controlled drugs that are obtained by physician prescription and filled in Kentucky pharmacies.