Complete Story
 

Nurse Practitioners Prescribe, Pharmacist Confidentiality, and HB 307

Nurse practitioners can now prescribe drugs in Ohio

- but dispensing has been tightly controlled.


The OPA was successful in its fight to keep nurse practitioner dispensing limited only to free clinics, and to the five categories of drugs allowed in the nurse's pilot program. The nurse practitioners originally wanted to prescribe AND DISPENSE all categories of drugs in any practice site where they worked. The patients of those NP's would have been denied the oversight of the pharmacist in looking for drug interactions, overdoses, etc. Ohio was the 50th state to allow nurse practitioner prescribing.

 

Pharmacist Confidentiality Legislation Now In Committee

Senate Bill 172 gives pharmacists the same confidentiality privilege that physicians and lawyers have. Current law in Ohio and most other states says that pharmacists' records are not confidential, and may be subpoenaed in civil court cases. When pharmacists engage in disease management, you collect confidential information about the patient's disease state. That type of information would never be available from a physician's office in divorce cases and other civil matters. However, PHARMACISTS have been required to testify using information they have gathered. This bill would protect your patients from that serious problem. We'll let you know when to contact your senator about this bill.

 

H.B. 307; Any Willing
Pharmacy Passes out of Committee


House Bill 307 which will allow all Ohioans access to any pharmacy willing to meet the terms set by managed care contracts for pharmacy services was passed out of the House Insurance Committee last month by a vote of 14 to 9. The bill introduced in May by Representative Bryan Williams (R-Akron) will require any health insuring corporation(HIC), or contract which provides coverage for prescription drug services by participating pharmacies to also provide coverage for non-participating pharmacies that are willing to meet the terms and conditions of the pharmacy program of the HICs or of the participating network pharmacies. Testifying in support of the bill in May and June were Alon Apel, OPA, Director of Government Affairs and members, Dominic Bartone, R.Ph, Tom Whiston,R.Ph., and Robert Marks, R.Ph. The bill will be voted on by the full House of Representatives this fall.

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