Give Pharmacists Provider Status for Practicing CDTM, ASHP Advises DEA

9/30/2008

ASHP warned the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that health-system pharmacists may be unable to provide needed patient care if the DEA does not recognize them as practitioners with prescribing authority under the agency’s proposed rule on e-prescribing for controlled substances.

The Society submitted comments on the DEA’s proposed rule that would allow practitioners to use electronic prescribing for controlled substances and pharmacies to receive and dispense e-prescriptions. The DEA said e-prescribing for controlled substances would reduce paperwork for the agency’s registrants, decrease errors caused by illegible handwriting and misunderstood oral prescriptions and cut the amount of time patients wait for their prescriptions to be filled.

ASHP believes the DEA should recognize pharmacists as providers with prescribing authority because some of them meet the primary needs of patients by providing collaborative drug therapy management. These pharmacists may not be able to provide needed patient care if they are not recognized under the DEA rule as providers with prescribing authority.

The proposed rule sets requirements for pharmacies, including verification that practitioners dispensing controlled substances are authorized by the DEA to issue the prescriptions. In addition, annual third-party audits for systems used to create controlled substance prescriptions would be required. Because some of the audits, such as SysTrust SAS 70, are a financial burden to hospitals and small clinics, ASHP recommended the DEA ensure they can be performed at reasonable cost or determine a business solution that makes the audits practical for them.

Read ASHP’s letter to the DEA.