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On November 17, 2021, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (the “Notice”) seeking the public’s help with understanding the “practice, industry, and state regulations of telepharmacy.”

As DEA acknowledges in the Notice, telepharmacy is not a term defined by the Controlled Substances Act or DEA’s regulations. The agency’s current understanding of telepharmacy is that it involves “the provision of pharmacist care by a remote pharmacist, through the use of telecommunications and other technologies, to a patient located at a dispensing site.” DEA further states that the dispensing site is usually a “brick and mortar remote site” or “self-service, automated machines.”

Update: DEA has reopened the comment period for the proposed rulemaking from February 25, 2021, until March 29, 2021.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) published its long-awaited Notice of Proposed Rulemaking  (NPRM)  regarding suspicious orders of controlled substances. This will likely be the most heavily scrutinized rule issued by DEA this year. Registrants impacted by this rule should submit comments by March 29, 2021.

Based on information posted on its website, the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) will end its Controlled Substances Act (CSA) subscription service, effective November 17, 2020. As you may recall, the NTIS CSA subscription service provides near-real time information on all active and retired DEA registrations. This is/was a useful tool, particularly for distributors and pharmacies, to check the status of a DEA registration before controlled substances are distributed or dispensed. Many entities have embedded and automated this data into their order management and/or dispensing software. So, this is potentially a big deal.

On October 5, 2020, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) establishing a registration category for emergency medical services (EMS) agencies and the corresponding regulatory requirements for the new category of registrants.  This regulatory action implements the ‘‘Protecting Patient Access to Emergency Medications Act of 2017 (the Act). The NPRM includes the following provisions mandated by the Act:

Prescription and magnifying glassWith the filing of two class action lawsuits, one against Walgreens and Costco, and one against CVS, in two federal district courts on August 6, pharmacies find themselves in a perplexing situation (yet again). For these suits were filed not by those who suffered from the over-dispensing of opioids, but by chronic pain patients who were denied opioid medication by pharmacies.

On June 5, 2020, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) received an Interim Final Rule from the Drug Enforcement Administration titled, Implementation of the SUPPORT Act: Dispensing and Administering Controlled Substances for Medicated-Assisted Treatment.  This rule implements certain provisions of the SUPPORT Act “relating to the expansion of medication-assisted treatment providers and to the delivery of a controlled substance by a pharmacy to a practitioner.”

A little more than 10 years ago the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued an Interim Final Rule with Request for Comment regarding Electronic Prescriptions for Controlled Substances (EPCS).  The Interim Final Rule became effective on June 1, 2010.  DEA received over 200 comments but never issued a Final Rule.

On April 21, 2020, DEA issued a second Interim Final Rule regarding EPCS, this time re-opening the comment period to obtain additional feedback from industry.  While this is a somewhat unorthodox approach, it is a prudent step toward finalizing the EPCS rule.

In response to issues raised by the Healthcare Distribution Alliance (“HDA”), earlier this week the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) published additional guidance for DEA-registered distributors on the agency’s COVID-19 Information Page.  Among other issues previously addressed by DEA, the recent guidance addresses suspicious order monitoring and conducting due diligence on customers.