Washington State

House of Representatives

Office of Program Research

BILL

ANALYSIS

Health Care & Wellness Committee

HB 2681

This analysis was prepared by non-partisan legislative staff for the use of legislative members in their deliberations. This analysis is not a part of the legislation nor does it constitute a statement of legislative intent.

Background:

The Pharmacy Quality Assurance Commission (Commission) regulates the practice of pharmacy and enforces all laws placed under its jurisdiction.

A pharmacist is a person properly licensed by the Commission to engage in the practice of pharmacy. The practice of pharmacy includes the initiation or modification of drug therapy in accordance with written guidelines or protocols previously established and approved for his or her practice by a practitioner authorized to prescribe drugs. The written guideline or protocol, also known as a collaborative drug therapy agreement, is defined as an agreement in which any practitioner authorized to prescribe legend drugs delegates to a pharmacist or group of pharmacists authority to conduct specified prescribing functions. The agreement must include:

The parties subject to the agreement. The practitioner authorized to prescribe must be in active practice, and the authority granted must be within the scope of the practitioners' current practice;
A time period not to exceed two years during which the written guidelines or protocol will be in effect; and
The type of prescriptive authority decisions which the pharmacist or pharmacists are authorized to make.

Summary of Bill:

A pharmacist may prescribe and dispense self-administered hormonal contraceptives to a patient who is at least 18 years old. A self-administered hormonal contraceptive is defined as (1) a drug taken orally that is composed of a combination of hormones and that is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prevent pregnancy; and (2) a transdermal patch applied to the skin that releases a drug composed of a combination of hormones and that is approved by the FDA to prevent pregnancy.

A pharmacist that prescribes and dispenses self-administered hormonal contraceptives must:

complete a training program approved by the Commission that is related to prescribing self-administered hormonal contraceptives;
require the patient to complete a self-screening risk assessment tool developed by the Commission;
notify the patient's primary care practitioner of any drugs furnished to the patient or enter the appropriate information in a patient record system shared with the primary care practitioner. If the patient does not have a primary care practitioner, the pharmacist must provide the patient with a written record of the contraceptive that the pharmacist prescribed and dispensed and advise the patient to consult a primary care practitioner or women's health care practitioner; and
dispense the contraceptive as soon as practicable after the pharmacist issues the prescription.

The pharmacist may not:

require a patient to schedule an appointment with the pharmacist; or
prescribe and dispense contraceptive to a patient who does not have a record of a clinical visit for women's health within the three years immediately following the date that a pharmacist first prescribed and dispensed contraceptives to the patient.

The Commission must adopt rules to establish standard procedures for the prescribing and dispensing of self-administered hormonal contraceptives by pharmacists, including the development of the self-screening assessment tool.

All state and federal laws governing insurance coverage of contraceptives apply to self-administered hormonal contraceptives prescribed by a pharmacist.