Members of the Oklahoma Commission on Opioid Abuse hope an electronic prescribing law makes it to the governor’s desk this session.
E-prescribing can help fight opioid abuse by making forged prescriptions nearly impossible, but how Oklahoma will implement it is still being worked out. The state House and Senate are on track to convene a conference committee to cobble competing proposals into one law.
Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Commissioner Terri White said the final version should give the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs the authority to grant exemptions.
"Providers can request the waiver through them and they make that determination instead of just making these exemptions up front in the law," White said.
The House e-prescribing bill lists exemptions for veterinarians, drugs administered in facilities like nursing homes and a few other circumstances.
Narcotics bureau Director John Scully said they don’t know what to expect if put in charge of e-prescribing waivers.
"I don’t know if we’re going to have 5,000 or 10,000 waiver requests that come through to us and we’re required to go out and verify the information in each waiver request, such as they don’t have internet, they don’t have computers or whatever," Scully said.
The commission knows not all the state’s doctors and pharmacies will be able to participate right away. Besides not having internet access or, in some cases, computers, small practices may not have the money for the software
One solution could be the state issues them prescription pads.
"That way, if it’s not an e-script, it must be this. And they’re signed out, you know exactly the number that’s tracking them, just like a lottery ticket. We know where they are," said Oklahoma Pharmacy Board Chief Compliance Officer Cindy Fain.
Either the state narcotics bureau or medical board could get that task, depending on the final version of Oklahoma’s e-prescribing law.
Late Monday, Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill adding fentanyl and its analogs to the list of substances subject to Oklahoma's trafficking laws. That is the first opioid commission recommendation signed into law.
