Home - ICHP KeePosted

Official Newsjournal of the Illinois Council of Health-System Pharmacists

Board of Pharmacy Update
Highlights of the September 2019 Meeting

by Scott A. Meyers, Executive Vice President

The September 10th Meeting of the Board of Pharmacy was held at the Michael A. Bilandic Building at 160 N LaSalle in downtown Chicago. These are the highlights of that meeting.

Welcome – Cecilia Abundis, Acting Director of the Division of Professional Affairs welcomed the Board and the audience and thanked all for their efforts to make Illinois’ medication use safer. The Director sat in on most of the meeting.

NABP Update – The Board was asked for volunteers to review Illinois items on the Multistate Pharmacy Jurisprudence Examination (MPJE). In addition, the Board discussed a resolution that will be introduced at the 2019 District IV meeting in Indianapolis in October, which will ask NABP to exclude the addition of flavorings in their definitions of non-sterile compounding. Currently USP Chapter 795 considers adding flavorings to otherwise commercially available products as non-sterile compounding and this creates significant hardships for community pharmacies preparing pediatric liquid medications. The Board will discuss. If the resolution is adopted it will be presented at the 2020 Annual Meeting that will be held in May in Baltimore, MD.

NAPLEX/MPJE Remediation – Nikoli Markoski, PGY2 resident at Northwestern Memorial Hospital provided a quick update on obtaining materials from RxPrep for the Board to review. The Board is pro-actively attempting to identify approved programs for remediation for pharmacy graduates who fail the NAPLEX and/or MPJE three times, as required by Illinois law. The materials have not yet been delivered because of an on-going review for revision in 2020.

Task Force Update – Board Chair and Task Force member Al Carter reported that the Task Force has completed its work and a report is due to be distributed to the Governor and the General Assembly in the very near future. More details on the Task Force deliberations in August appear in the Government Affairs Report in this issue.

Legislative Update – The update was provided by Garth Reynolds of IPhA and highlighted several bills that passed both chambers of the General Assembly this Spring Session and have been signed by the Governor.

Next Meeting – The next meeting of the Board is set for November 12th at 10:30 am in Chicago. Check the IDFPR Website for exact location. Meetings of the Board of Pharmacy are open to the public and pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy students are encouraged to attend.