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Board of Pharmacy Update
Highlights of the January 2019 Meeting
by Scott A. Meyers, Executive Vice President
The January 8th Meeting of the Board of Pharmacy was held at the Michael A. Bilandic Building, 160 N. LaSalle Street in downtown Chicago. These are the highlights of that meeting.
2020 Fiscal Year Board Meeting Dates - The 2020 fiscal year for Illinois begins on July 1, 2019 with the Board establishing their fiscal year meeting dates in January of the prior fiscal year. The following dates have been selected for future Board of Pharmacy meetings for fiscal year 2020:
July 9, 2019 - Chicago
September 10, 2019 - Chicago
November 12, 2019 - Chicago
January 14, 2020 - Chicago
March 10, 2020 - Chicago
May 11, 2020 - Springfield
Meetings are open to the public and pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, and pharmacy students are encouraged to attend.
Remedial Training for NAPLEX and MPJE Failure - The Board continued their discussion of available programs for remedial training for new graduates who have failed NAPLEX and/or the MPJE three times. Illinois law requires those graduates in that situation to complete a remedial training program of at least 30 hours before they may sit again for the portions of either exam they have not passed. Details of the requirement may be found in the Pharmacy Practice Rules, Section 1330.330 c) and e). Currently programming available outside of several of the Illinois colleges of pharmacy review courses for graduating candidates can be found on the Internet but no specific programs have been reviewed or approved by the Board and Department. A couple of the programs discussed were
RxPrep.com and
PassNAPLEXnow.com.
NABP Interactive Forum - Al Carter, Board Chair, reported that he participated in the Annual Forum in December which brings together representatives from all 50 State Boards of Pharmacy to discuss new trends in practice. The following trend topics were discussed:
- State mandating pharmacist and pharmacy technician use of NABP’s CPE Monitor for logging continuing education credits.
- Current data from the Foreign Pharmacy Graduate Equivalency Examination.
- Development of a universally accepted definition of standards of care for pharmacists.
- Establishing one-click access to NABP’s shared State PMPs.
Task Force Update - Chairman Carter discussed previous discussions of the Collaborative Pharmaceutical Task Force, which have been reported in previous issues of the KeePosted. He did encourage meeting attendees to spread the word that all Task Force meetings are open to the public and practicing frontline pharmacists and technicians should consider attending.
Department Update - Several areas in the Pharmacy Practice Act Rules need to be updated and the Department will begin working on them shortly. Included in those updates will be the new rules regarding certified pharmacy technician continuing education. It is projected that the implementation of the requirement for 20 hours of CE credit will be in 2021 if the rules are completed and approved in 2019.
Legislative Update - This meeting’s legislative update was provided by Garth Reynolds, IPhA Executive Director. Garth discussed bills passed by last spring’s General Assembly and signed by the Governor. As mentioned in earlier issues of the KeePosted, SB3170 or Public Act 100-0804 now allows non-controlled substance prescriptions to be written to be filled for up to 15 months instead of one-year. This went into effect for new prescriptions on January 1, 2019. Prescribers may still write for a shorter duration, if desired. Several other bills were discussed and have all been reviewed in previous Government Affairs Reports in the KeePosted.
Public Comment Period - Garth Reynolds announced that IPhA has made a policy-shift and now supports pharmacist participation in the distribution of medical and recreational marijuana.
Next Meeting - The next meeting of the Board is set for March 12th at 10:30 am in downtown Chicago. This is a change from previous years when the March Meeting was normally held in Springfield. Instead the May meeting of the Board will move to Springfield if rooms may be found to accommodate the switch. Check the IDFPR Website
www.idfpr.com for exact location. These meetings are open to the public and pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy students are encouraged
to attend.
