Some doctors are holding off prescribing painkillers after a hacker accessed more than 35.5 million of Virginia’s most sensitive prescription drug records two months ago, a state official told a legislative panel Monday.
p
Lawmakers probing the state’s computer services bureaucracy, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, also learned that its former director was dismissed earlier this month after refusing to pay VITA’s contracted partner, which had missed key deadlines.
p
Hearings Monday by the House Science and Technology Committee and a Senate Finance technology subcommittee focused on VITA and its $10-year, $2.4 billion contract with Northrop Grumman after years worth of state agencies’ complaints over high costs and long service delays they have experienced from the partnership.
p
Lawmakers intensified their scrutiny of the six-year-old agency created to consolidate the state’s diverse and far-flung computer systems after the Prescription Monitoring Program was hacked on April 30 and after the dismissal of former VITA chief Lemuel Stewart.
p
With the prescription database still offline two months after it was accessed because of FBI and state criminal investigations and work to upgrade the system, some doctors are reluctant to prescribe highly addictive painkillers such as Oxycodone, Vicodin, morphine and Valium, said Sandra Whitley Ryals, director of the Department of Health Professions.
p
I do not have any indication, however, of how many that might be, she told the panel.
p
Later, she downplayed the magnitude, describing calling the reports sparse and anecdotal. She said the department has gotten no complaints from patients being denied needed drugs.
p
I do know that our prescribers, mostly physicians, have grave concerns about not being able to access the information, she said. They were being asked to use their best judgment, she said.
p
The database was established for professionals who prescribe painkillers, the pharmacists who fill the prescriptions and police to flag abuse and theft.
p
Among the information accessed were names, birth…