DEA Suspicious Order Monitoring with Blue Link ERP

Since 1971, the DEA has required pharmaceutical “registrants” to monitor sales orders and inform their DEA Field Division Office of any suspicious orders of controlled substances. The criteria for a suspicious order is any order that is of unusual size, any order that deviates substantially from a normal pattern, and any orders of unusual frequency. With multiple customers and ship-to locations, trying to manually police the order entry process is impossible. Therefore, to adhere to DEA regulations, your business requires a sophisticated software solution to accurately track, monitor and report on any suspicious orders. With input from our clients and following industry regulations, Blue Link’s complete end-to-end Pharmaceutical Distribution Software includes sophisticated and configurable Suspicious Order Monitoring functionality.

This feature comes out-of-the-box with our other pharmaceutical-specific tools including lot tracking, DEA and state license expiry date management, identification of product, customer SKU classification and controlled drug scheduling, transaction history management (T3), saleable returns and more. These pharmaceutical distribution software features work alongside core ERP functionality – such as inventory management, accounting, warehouse management, financials and shipping.

Blue Link’s suspicious order monitoring (SOM) functionality works by monitoring sales order activity in several areas throughout the software. In addition to the criteria listed above and outlined by the DEA, Blue Link allows you to automatically check all sales order activity for a variety of other criteria such as:

  • The ratio of controlled vs. non-controlled quantities
  • Abnormal combinations of products
  • Items outside of the scope of practice
  • Strength check
  • Different product family combinations
  • Orders with a large percentage of products from the same family

Blue Link provides complete flexibility to our customers by allowing them to create additional criteria for SOM outside of those set above. The software also allows you to dictate which products you want to check. Any order that then meets the criteria outlined in Blue Link’s SOM tool gets flagged and the system will automatically put the order on hold. The system will then notify an authorized individual within your company of the order on hold. The ability to configure the suspicious order monitoring criteria and remove the hold status requires specific user permissions.

Blue Link’s SOM functionality allows you to feel confident that the sales orders you process fall within the DEA guidelines. If a customer tries to order a product that is not acceptable, or if someone on your team enters the wrong quantity on the order, the system will immediately flag and hold the sales order. This makes it easy to train new employees and gives management peace of mind by preventing users without the right permissions from making mistakes, engaging in fraudulent activities, or violating DEA and DSCSA regulations.

This sophisticated functionality can help you achieve VAWD (now NABP) accreditation, comply with the DEA requirement and shows visiting DEA inspectors that you are serious about your responsibilities.