BATON ROUGE- State oversight of the prescribing of potentially dangerous drugs, including opioids, needs improvement to reduce doctor shopping, fraud and other illegal methods of getting them.

Nearly 1,000 people died in Louisiana of drug overdoses in 2016, an increase of 14.7 percent over 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Auditors found that the state Board of Pharmacy's database of prescriptions is incomplete and it doesn't have an effective process for identifying suspicious pharmacies.

In one instance, auditors found that 161 of 3,222 Workers Compensation prescriptions and 14,467 of 484,173 Medicaid prescriptions for hydrocodone and oxycodone dispensed during 2016 were missing from the database.

To read the full report, click here.