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NarxCare

by Bamboo Health  ·  US

Last verified

PDMP risk-scoring and analytics tool that shows controlled-substance history and overdose risk scores to prescribers and pharmacists.

Visit NarxCare (opens in new tab)Read our methodology

At a glance

Pricing
No public price. The page does not say whether state PDMP funding covers access.
HIPAA
Not disclosed
SOC 2
Not disclosed
EHRs
—
Founded
—
HQ
US
On this page

Independent score  ·  By our public rubric

57/100Solid choice

Editorial rating 4.0 / 5

How it’s computed →
  • Clinical Integration
    0/6.6

    No EHR integrations listed

  • Evidence Strength
    21/27

    5 peer-reviewed papers

  • Vendor & Market
    10.9/21.6

    Mid-tier funding and adoption

  • Sentiment & Transparency
    3/6

    Pricing on request, no public amounts

▸ Show all 11 dimensions

Clinical Integration

  • EHR integrations (count)0/4

    No EHR integrations listed

  • Top-3 EHR coverage (Epic / Oracle / Athena)0/2

    None of the top-3 EHRs covered

Evidence Strength

  • Peer-reviewed papers21/21

    5 peer-reviewed papers

  • RCT / meta-analysis / systematic review0/6

    No RCT, meta-analysis, or systematic review

Vendor & Market

  • Funding & adoption signal11/16

    Mid-tier funding and adoption

  • Years in market0/6

    Founded year not recorded

Sentiment & Transparency

  • Pricing transparency3/6

    Pricing on request, no public amounts

Scored November 2, 2026 · Public scoring method v1.2.0

PDMP risk-scoring and analytics tool that shows controlled-substance history and overdose risk scores to prescribers and pharmacists.

No public price. The page does not say whether state PDMP funding covers access.

Evidence record

Peer-reviewed

5 studies on PubMed: 3 other, 2 editorial, published 2023 to 2026. Read the literature summary

Verification
  • Score computed November 2, 2026, method 1.2.0
  • Review written November 2, 2026
Cite this record

MedAI Verdict, NarxCare record, https://medaiverdict.com/tools/narxcare, version November 2, 2026

Change history
View every change to this record

Bottom line

NarxCare is Bamboo Health's PDMP analytics product. The vendor describes "data, visualizations, and analytics for a more informed review of PDMP data" and says NarxCare is "intended to aid, not replace, medical decision making". Prescribers, dispensers and pharmacists use it inside EHR and pharmacy systems. Someone who needs the scoring method documented, or who wants a drug reference, is not served by it, since the algorithm is proprietary and its inputs are not public.

What does NarxCare display?

The vendor's product page calls it "a set of data and tools delivered within tiles that are intended to support a healthcare provider's review". The page does not describe the scores. The literature reports Narx Scores for narcotics, sedatives and stimulants and an Overdose Risk Score. The page refers to "existing point-of-care systems" and "EHR and pharmacy management systems" without naming any.

Company-wide figures from Bamboo Health, not specific to NarxCare, include 1M+ providers accessing PDMP information in clinical workflows, 106M+ controlled-substance insights per month and coverage of 52 states and territories.

Where does the published literature stand?

Seventeen papers address NarxCare, from 2019 to 2026. None shows a Bamboo or Appriss affiliation, so none looks vendor-authored. None is a prospective trial of its effect on overdose or care.

Several are critical. Wang and colleagues (NPJ Digit Med, 2026, PMID 41735474) rebuilt risk models from the published technical specification on PDMP plus IQVIA claims data and compared their own models with the reported benchmark. Precision in the rebuilt models ranged from 0.01 to 0.32 against a reported 0.75, and F1 from 0.02 to 0.39 against 0.65. The figures belong to the authors' reconstruction, not to NarxCare's own scores. They write that the system "has generated significant patient complaints". McElfresh and colleagues (JAMIA, 2023) called for better validation of opioid overdose risk algorithms, using NarxCare as one of two national systems in a case study.

Buonora and colleagues (J Gen Intern Med, 2024) argue the evidence is insufficient for NarxCare as an unregulated decision support tool. Kabella (J Gen Intern Med, 2025) studied documents on opioid-industry influence on NarxCare's development. Hu and colleagues (Soc Sci Med, 2026) address PDMP risk governance and pain credibility. An ethnography by Lange and colleagues (Sociol Health Illn, 2026) describes scores presented as authoritative yet unexaminable.

Seven retrospective surgical studies from 2021 to 2026 used the scores as a predictor, among them scores above 300 and adverse outcomes after hip arthroplasty. A 2019 spine surgery study found admission narcotics scores not associated with adverse outcomes.

What is the status of the FDA petitions?

Two citizen petitions have asked FDA to declare NarxCare a regulated device. Citeline Medtech Insight reported on March 11, 2026 that the second, docket FDA-2025-P-0701, was under review at CDRH, and that the first had "failed". The outcome of FDA-2025-P-0701 is unknown. The vendor makes no FDA claim.

Bamboo Health ownership and access

The vendor's About page says Appriss Health acquired PatientPing in 2021 and renamed the combined company Bamboo Health. Crunchbase and Tracxn listings, as excerpted in web search results, name Clearlake Capital Group and Insight Partners as investors, and current ownership is not established.

No price is public, and the product page does not say whether state PDMP funding covers access.

The verdict

Prescribers and pharmacies already working from PDMP data are the users NarxCare is built around, and a clinical lead who requires a documented scoring method is not served by a proprietary algorithm.

Editorial review last generated November 2, 2026. Synthesized from clinician sentiment, peer-reviewed coverage, and our editorial silo picks. Refined by hand where vendor facts change.

What it costs

All tiers are custom-quoted. The vendor does not publish per-provider list pricing.

TierMonthlyAnnualNotes
EnterpriseNot statedNot statedNo public price. The page does not say whether state PDMP funding covers access.

Source: vendor pricing page. Last checked November 2, 2026.

Who builds it

It was previously known as Appriss Health, an acquisition or rebrand that healthcare-AI buyers should track when reviewing prior independent coverage.

What the literature says

5 peer-reviewed studies indexed on PubMed evaluate NarxCare in clinical contexts. The most relevant are shown below, ranked by editorial relevance score combining title match, study design, recency, and journal tier.

Paths Forward for Clinicians Amidst the Rise of Unregulated Clinical Decision Support Software: Our Perspective on NarxCare. (opens in new tab)
Buonora MJ, Axson SA, Cohen SM, et al.· J Gen Intern Med· 2024Editorial
Amidst the US overdose epidemic, policymakers, law enforcement agencies, and healthcare institutions have contributed to a decrease in opioid prescribing, assuming reduced mortality would result-an assumption we now understand was oversimplified. At this intersection between public health and public safety domains as they relate to opioid prescribing, unregulated and proprietary clinical decision support tools have emerged without rigorous external validation or public data sharing. In the following piece, we discuss challenges facing clinicians practicing medicine amidst unregulated clinical…
Letter to the Editor Responding to "Paths Forward for Clinicians Amidst the Rise of Unregulated Clinical Decision Support Software: Our Perspective on NarxCare". (opens in new tab)
Cochran G, Brown JL, Winhusen TJ· J Gen Intern Med· 2024Editorial
Preoperative NarxCare Overdose Risk Scores Greater than 200 Are Associated With Worse 1-Year Patient-Reported Outcomes and Dissatisfaction after Primary Total Knee Arthroplasty. (opens in new tab)
Emara AK, Khan ST, Pasqualini I, et al.· J Arthroplasty· 2026
The NarxCare Overdose Risk Score (ORS) is a measure of prescription drug use with scores ranging from 0 to 999, and higher scores suggest worse prescription drug use patterns, including opioids, sedatives, and stimulants. We aimed to evaluate the association of preoperative NarxCare ORS with clinically meaningful improvements in patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) and satisfaction at one year. Patients undergoing primary total knee arthroplasty at an academic health care system (2018 to 2022) were included. Of 6,710 patients, 44.8% had ORS 0, 28.0% had 100 to 199, and 15.1% had 200 to 2…
Preoperative NarxCare overdose risk scores greater than 100 are associated with worse PROMs improvements and dissatisfaction after primary THA. (opens in new tab)
Khan ST, Emara AK, Patel SV, et al.· Arch Orthop Trauma Surg· 2026
The NarxCare Overdose Risk Score (ORS) is a weighted measure of patient-specific prescription drug use. In patients undergoing primary total hip arthroplasty (THA), this study aimed to evaluate (1) the trend of the ORS from preoperative to 1-year postoperatively, and (2) the association of preoperative ORS with achievement of clinically meaningful improvements in patient reported outcome measures (PROMs), and satisfaction at 1-year. All patients who underwent primary unilateral elective THA at a USA tertiary healthcare system from January 2016-December 2022 were eligible. Patients with incomp…
Opioid and Sedative NarxCare Scores Greater Than 300 Are Associated With Adverse Outcomes After Nonemergent Spine Surgery. (opens in new tab)
Emara AK, Sultan A, Grits D, et al.· Spine (Phila Pa 1976)· 2023
This was a prospectively captured cohort study. To explore associations between the preoperative opioid-specific NarxCare Scores (NCS) (NCS-opioids) as well as sedative-specific NCS (NCS-sedatives) as measures of patients' prescription drug use and (1) 90-day postoperative readmission; (2) ED visits; (3) reoperation; (4) prolonged (>2 d) hospital length of stay (LOS); and (5) nonhome discharge. In addition, we sought to evaluate the previously suggested 300+ threshold as a cutoff for moderate/high-risk designation. The association between preoperative opioids and sedative use and healthc…

See all on PubMed (opens in new tab)

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