Nevada News: Regulatory Update

January 1, 2009 10:42 AM Topics: Controlled substances

Reprinted from the January 2009 Nevada State Board of Pharmacy Newsletter.

For the betterment of the practice of pharmacy and ultimately for the benefit of the patient, the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy has been quite active on the regulatory front. Brief highlights follow:

1. You no longer are required to “cancel” a Schedule II prescription. Simply date and initial after verification as you do any prescription.
2. There is no longer an age limit on immunizations by pharmacists and the reporting requirements have been simplified.
3. The Exam for the Certification of Pharmacy Technicians (ExCPT) is now recognized as pharmacy technician certification along with the old standard, the Pharmacy Technician Certification Examination (PTCE).
4. There are new regulations governing the duties of consulting pharmacists in the surgical center
setting.

Finally, the Board office continually receives calls regarding the changing of the date on a Schedule II prescription, and many of you have misinterpreted the rule. The date change rule simply allows the pharmacist, upon speaking with the practitioner who wrote the prescription, to correct a mistake written in the date. It does not circumvent the 14-day rule. You may not change the date of a Schedule II prescription that has not been properly tendered within 14 days (in other words, a patient may not bring you a Schedule II prescription that he or she has been carrying around for months and ask you to call the prescriber and get the date changed; however, the rule does allow you to correct the date on a properly tendered Schedule II prescription where the prescriber simply wrote the wrong year.