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Government Affairs Report
An Update from the Collaborative Pharmaceutical Task Force

by Scott A. Meyers, Executive Vice President

The Task Force met for the 7^th time in 2018 in Chicago and Springfield on Tuesday, July 10^th.  The topic of discussion was duties and responsibilities for pharmacy technicians.  The following actions were taken by the Task Force:

Technician duties – The task force discussed whether the Practice Act should delineate tasks that pharmacy technicians should be allowed to do or limit that list to tasks technicians should be prohibited from performing.  The task force members agreed that a list of allowable tasks would often be out-of-date and hard to revise whereas, a list of prohibited tasks would be much shorter and easier to maintain.  Currently the Act prohibits technicians from the following tasks:

            Patient Counseling

            Drug Regimen Review

            Clinical Conflict Resolution

            Transfer of Prescriptions

            Administration of Immunizations

The task force agreed that technicians should be allowed to transfer prescriptions since they may now receive verbal prescriptions from prescriber offices.  In addition, there was much discussion and eventual agreement that the act of administering immunizations (and other medications if properly trained and monitored) by technicians should be allowed.  Both of these tasks would be at the discretion of the PIC and pharmacist on duty.

When the pharmacist is out of the pharmacy – The task force discussed the ability of technicians to work in the pharmacy, including dispense filled refills to patients, when the pharmacist is on break, at lunch or in the restroom (on premises but not in the pharmacy).  The task force agreed that this is a reasonable practice and asked IDFPR staff to see if legislative (Act) or regulatory (Rule) changes were necessary to clearly allow these practices.

Technician Product Verification – The now professionally accepted term for Tech-Check-Tech was discussed at length.  Currently there is no real agreement as to whether this practice is acceptable within the Act.  However, considering that it is not covered in the list of prohibited tasks above, the task force felt that it was acceptable with the following caveats - The Department will determine if the Act or Rules need to be clarified and appropriate language should be drafted that requires pharmacies that use technician product verification meet specific requirements.  The Minnesota model was described as a good template; it requires education and training; validation; on-going continuous quality monitoring; and remediation if necessary.

For the third meeting since his appointment, Thomas Stiede, the organized labor representative to the task force, did not attend.  The task force members present agreed to move forward and begin taking action with or without Mr. Stiede.  For our very few members who work within a union organized department, I would urge you to complain to your union leadership that you are not being represented.  In my opinion, the unions were directly or indirectly responsible for this task force in the first place and to allow their representative to skip participation is disrespectful to the General Assembly, their members and the profession of pharmacy.

ICHP will continue to keep you informed on the progress of this important task force and its impending impact on the profession.