MFDS Significantly Strengthens Monitoring of Medical Narcotics Abuse Including Fentanyl

On the 26th, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced that it will significantly strengthen the management and supervision of doctors who prescribe medical narcotics such as fentanyl and propofol for misuse, as well as patients who engage in medical shopping.

To this end, the Ministry will launch a 120-member “Narcotics Misuse Monitoring Team (Monitoring Team)” within the Narcotics Safety Planning Office, where the public and private sectors cooperate. The Monitoring Team will oversee the monitoring of medical narcotics misuse and conduct more thorough and prompt inspections of suspected misuse cases by precisely analyzing big data from the Narcotics Integrated Management System.

The inspection frequency for narcotics prescriptions suspected of misuse will be increased from once a year to twice a year, shortening the inspection cycle to ensure the effectiveness of appropriate prescription measures at medical institutions. Additionally, ADHD medications, whose prescription volumes have recently increased, will be added to the investigation targets.

The current monitoring frequency, which has remained at about 10 times per year, will be significantly increased to around 30 times annually, and the monitoring methods will shift from post-inspection approaches such as joint inspections and regular checks to proactive planned monitoring for pre-inspection. The planned monitoring targets, including youth narcotics and medical self-prescriptions, will also be greatly expanded to 1,000 sites annually.

Furthermore, the Ministry will separate and make independent the medical narcotics distribution management sector from the Narcotics Distribution Rehabilitation Task Force to establish a dedicated department for monitoring narcotics misuse prescriptions.

The Korea Institute of Drug Safety & Risk Management, which operates the Narcotics Integrated Information System, will form a Narcotics Monitoring Support Task Force to efficiently support misuse monitoring tasks through administrative support such as extraction, processing, analysis, and provision of narcotics integrated information.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.