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Alabama News: Beware of Filling Internet Prescriptions
Published in the November 2007 Alabama State Board of Pharmacy Newsletter
The Board is aware that multiple Web site recruiters are making phone calls and sending faxes regarding electronic prescriptions, prescription faxes, and prescribing system schemes to increase prescription volumes and, of course, portraying some nice eye-catching fees of $20 per script. Be alert of the “fulfillment” center pitch. Many of these prescriptions are generated from an online questionnaire allegedly reviewed by a physician who then authorizes the prescription. The Web recruiter may say this is legal in Alabama and send check and safety procedures for your review describing the patient-physician relationship. The newest design described is a webcam doctor-patient interview, which also does not meet the requirement of a relationship. The physicians as well as the patients may or may not be located in the same state. Often, physicians will issue multiple prescriptions a day to patients around the country for controlled substances or lifestyle drugs. These organized schemes affect public health and safety, and for that reason, the Board encourages all pharmacists to be aware of Rule 680-X-2-.33 Internet Pharmacies.
680-X-2-.33 Internet Pharmacies
A pharmacist shall make every reasonable effort to ensure that any order, regardless of the means of transmission, has been issued for a legitimate medical purpose by an authorized practitioner. A pharmacist shall not dispense a prescription drug if the pharmacist has knowledge, or reasonably should have known under the circumstances, that the order for such drug was issued on the basis of an internet-based questionnaire, an internet-based consultation, or a telephonic consultation, all without a valid preexisting patient-practitioner relationship. Author: James S. Ward, JD.
Statutory Authority: Code of Alabama 1975, §34-23-92
