BATON ROUGE - The Louisiana Legislative Auditor's Office released findings of an oversight by the state's Louisiana Board of Pharmacy. More than 25,000 prescriptions were not filed in the state's database.

By law, the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy must maintain an electronic system (Prescription Monitoring Program) that monitors controlled substances and drugs of concern dispensed in the state.

The April 2016 audit revealed prescribed drugs, like hydrocodone and oxycodone, through the Medicaid and Worker's Comp system showed more than 14,000 missing prescriptions in a one-year period.

"Prescriptions that are filled by pharmacies aren't being entered into the database, so that when the stakeholders look at the database they are not going to see the potentially complete history of all the controlled substances that have been filled," said Dixon.

In recent years, the dispensing of addictive medication, like opioids and sedatives, have increased. Dixon says other entities use this database as well and it's imperative that the information is accurate.

"Pharmacists check to make sure patients coming in have not been 'doctor shopping.' Doctors use it to look up their patient's history, and they're required to access this database in certain circumstances prior to writing prescriptions," said Dixon.

The audit also spilled out more than 1,300 patients had prescriptions written by more than four doctors, which were filled by more than one pharmacy in one month in 2016.

The state auditors recommend the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy incorporate an internal audit at least every two years. 

Click here to see the full report.