GALLIPOLIS Early last week, health care patients in Gallia County became the first to enroll in a pilot program that officials hope will eventually be utilized by health care facilities throughout the nation to combat prescription drug abuse and improve patient safety.

The program, being launched through a public-private partnership between regional health care provider Holzer Health System and CrossChx, a company based in Gallipolis, is known as the Biometric Enrollment and Verification Prescription System and will allow doctors to compare health records from multiple sources to help determine the eligibility of a patient to receive a prescription for medication.

CrossChx (pronounced cross checks) will provide the technology to track health information and will, specifically, use biometrics, or the identification of an individual through his or her inherit traits in this case, fingerprints to allow prescribers to receive real-time patient information.

Participants in the program will be patients of Holzer and, according to officials, positive response has already been felt among the patients of the urgent care unit who began signing up last Monday.

Reportedly, Holzer and CrossChx have committed $900,000 in resources to the program, and the State of Ohio will provide $500,000 from the Childrens Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) through performance bonuses that Ohio achieved for increasing enrollment and retention of eligible children in Medicaid.

During a press conference last week, Orman Hall, director of the Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services, spoke about the epidemic that is prescription drug abuse and the possibility that exists within the pilot program to help combat this issue.

According to Hall, during the span between 1997 and 2010, a 10-fold increase in the use of prescription opiates can be seen within the overall health care system, and, during that period, a 400-percent increase in the number of opiate overdoses can also measured.

Hall, who also reported on his recent trip to a neonatal intensive care unit at a health care facility in Columbus, spoke about his hope that the program can make a difference in the shocking statistics surrounding prescription drug abuse.

Just this past week, I had an opportunity to visit the neonatal intensive care unit at Grant Hospital in Columbus and Grant Hospital is saying that 30 percent almost one out of every three of those babies in that unit their mothers were addicted to opiates and their babies are withdrawing from prescription opiates or heroin, Hall said. So, the problem is severe and this is one of a number of steps that we believe are going to make a profound difference in how our state is combating the problem of both opiate and prescription drug addiction in Ohio.

CrossChx Chairman Sean Lane, who is also the founder of BTS (Battlefield Telecommunications Systems), made remarks during the conference and spoke about how the technology used by his companies on the battlefield can now be utilized locally to combat the abuse and diversion of prescription drugs.

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Gallia first to enroll in Rx pilot program