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SMBO fines can be stiff and the state has wide latitude in determining how to apply these fines to practicing physicians. History has shown that data mined from the OARRS system is deeply flawed. Upon push-back from the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians and other physician organizations, the SMBO released the following statement on October 11:

“We would like to provide some additional information on a recent communication from the SMBO to our licensees.

In response to OARRS reporting data provided by SOBP, the SMBO contacted roughly 12,000 physicians who appeared in the report provided by the SOBP. The vast majority of physicians included in the report have non-egregious issues and minimal non-compliance matters that must be addressed. In fact, the median number of non-checks for each prescriber was in the single digits.

The intention of the September 30 letter from the SMBO was to encourage physicians to check their individual OARRS report, identify if/how a check was missed and make any necessary adjustments to office procedures to prevent missed checks in the future. This most often can be accomplished with a quick review of OARRS practices.

In a very limited number of instances (fewer than 1%), licensees had prescribed opioids or benzodiazepines without checking OARRS at rates that warrant additional, personalized discussion. The SMBO is in the process of doing additional outreach to those prescribers and anticipated completing those initial conversations by October 14th.”