Washington’s PMP was created (RCW 70.225 (2007)) to improve patient care and to stop prescription drug misuse by collecting dispensing records for Schedule II, III, IV and V drugs, and by making the information available to medical providers and pharmacists as a patient care tool. Program rules, WAC 246-470, took effect August 27, 2011. The program started data collection from all dispensers October 7, 2011.

Data available here are de-identified, and exclude patient, prescriber, and dispenser related information.

Prescriptions excluded from PMP include those dispensed outside of WA State, those prescribed for less than or equal to 24 hours, those administered or given to a patient in the hospital, and those dispensed from a Department of Corrections pharmacy (unless an offender is released with a prescription), an Opioid Treatment Program, and some federally operated pharmacies (Indian Health Services and Veterans Affairs report voluntarily).

Further information on collection and management of PMP data at DOH can be found at www.doh.wa.gov/pmp/data.

Injury from poisoning exists under several Injury Intents: unintentional (accidental), intentional self-harm, assault, undetermined and adverse effect and underdosing. Only injuries in the first four categories are reported here combined.
The data show rates per 100,000 people in order to standardize between areas with different population levels. Except for age specific rates, we use age-adjusted rates because they take into account where one age group dominates a population and thus are more representative. We use diagnosis by hospital records for non-fatal injury and cause of death from death certificates for fatal injury information.