Drug database on hold@

Created by a law passed in 2009, the plan to require pharmacists and physicians to tell the state when they dispense certain drugs should have started last month.

Now it's expected to open for business in late spring or summer ? at the soonest.

Florida, one of the few states without such a program, has become a haven for those seeking large quantities of prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and anti-anxiety medications such as Xanax.

A database that keeps drug shoppers from filling prescriptions at multiple outlets would be "the most effective tool Florida has to fight prescription drug diversion and abuse," said Bruce Grant, director of the Governor's Office of Drug Control, on Monday. It was his last day in the post ? incoming governor Rick Scott has eliminated the office.

"Certainly, it is disappointing to see the delays," Grant said.

The latest bid protest was lodged last week ? the same week that a Tampa police investigation revealed that a single pain clinic doctor prescribed more than 1 million oxycodone pills over a three-month period at one clinic.

But the delays began in September, when Ohio-based Optimum Technology Inc. filed its first protest over the state contract. The company had received the second-highest score out of six companies submitting bids; the highest score went to Health Information Design Inc., based in Alabama, which runs monitoring programs in 10 other states.