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Jul 2025
Protect Your Patients and Your Practice: How to Comply with the Texas PMP Mandate
The Texas Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) is a patient care tool to help inform prescribing practices and address prescription drug misuse, diversion and overdose. In March 2020, the Texas Legislature mandated that physicians check the Texas PMP before prescribing opioids, benzodiazepines, barbiturates or carisoprodol.
Here is what you need to know to comply with the mandate.
Know when to check the PMP.
The mandate applies to all Texas physicians and all outpatient and discharge prescriptions of opioids, benzodiazepines, barbiturates or carisoprodol, no matter the duration of the prescription. However, a PMP check is not necessary under the following circumstances:
- A patient has a cancer diagnosis, sickle cell disease or care provided by a licensed hospice provider.
- A prescriber makes a good faith effort to access the PMP but is unable to do so due to uncontrollable circumstances.
- Before or during an inpatient stay, such as a hospital admission.
- During an outpatient visit in settings like an emergency department or ambulatory surgical center.
Review the full PMP patient report.
When a patient’s record is accessed, some integrated electronic health records show only a patient score, rather than a full report. However, viewing the patient score alone is not enough to comply with the mandated PMP lookup requirement. To comply with the mandate, physicians must review a full controlled substance history report for every patient, every time.
Document PMP review.
Per the Texas Medical Board, “Each time the patient’s PMP history is accessed, the physician or advanced practice provider must ensure that the review is documented in the patient’s medical record.”
In the five years since the mandate took effect, the number of eligible physicians registered to use the Texas PMP has increased from 54% to 87%. Thank you for the important role you play in preventing prescription drug misuse and overdose in your community.
Explore opportunities to learn more about the Texas PMP and earn continuing medical education credit at txpmp.org.
