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Board of Pharmacy Update
Highlights of the January Meeting
by Scott A. Meyers, Executive Vice President
The January 9th Board of Pharmacy Meeting was held at the James R. Thompson Center at Randolph Street and LaSalle Street in downtown Chicago. These are the highlights of that meeting.
New Board Member Introduced – Board Chair, Yash Patel introduced Glen Pietrandoni as a new pharmacist member of the Board of Pharmacy. Glen will replace Phil Burgess who served nearly 15 years on the Board. Mr. Patel thanked Mr. Burgess for his many years of service to the State and its citizens.
NABP Annual Meeting – The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy will conduct its Annual Meeting in Denver on May 5-8. Yash Patel will serve as the Illinois Delegate to the meeting with Ned Milenkovich as first alternate and Denise Scarpelli as second alternate.
Department Update – Katy Straub, Board of Pharmacy’s general counsel provided news from the Department of Financial and Professional Affairs. The first meeting of the Collaborative Pharmaceutical Task Force will occur later in the day (January 9th) at the Thompson Center. The Task Force has been charged to discuss and identify recommendations on 16 items identified by the General Assembly related to the practice of pharmacy. Many of the issues stem from bills introduced in last year’s General Assembly related to workload issues and e-prescribing.
The draft compounding rules were formally published in the Illinois Register on December 26, 2017. The public, including the pharmacy public, has 45 days to provide comments back to the Department. The comment period ends on February 8th. This draft also contains some clean-up language related to the stocking of automated dispensing and storage systems.
Dr. Aarti Parikh, pharmacy investigator for the Department has recently completed NABP’s sterile product investigator certification. Additional pharmacy investigators are scheduled to complete this certification in 2018.
Robert Nelson has been hired by the Department as an investigator and will cover the territory previously covered by former investigator Nancy Hall. He will be based out of Springfield and will cover the southern half of the State.
Pharmacists and pharmacy technicians may cover their home address on their publicly displayed licenses with a small piece of paper. Registrants may not black out the home address with a marker as this is considered defacing their license. Also, now that registrants may print a new license on demand from the IDFPR website, every work site should display a printed license and not a photo copy.
Future Meetings of the Board – these are the dates and locations for the next year’s Board of Pharmacy meetings:
|
|
| Mar. 13, 2018 |
Springfield |
| May 15, 2018 |
Chicago* |
| July 10,2018 |
Chicago |
| Sept. 11, 2018 |
Chicago |
| Nov. 13, 2018 |
Chicago |
| Jan. 8, 2019 |
Chicago |
| Mar. 12, 2019 |
Springfield |
| May 14, 2019 |
Chicago |
*moved back a week due to a conflict with the NABP Annual Meeting
License Renewal – Pharmacist, pharmacy technicians, student pharmacist and pharmacy licenses are up for renewal by March 31, 2018. Pharmacists must have their continuing education credits completed and licenses renewed on or prior to March 31st. It normally takes 2-3 business days for the renewal to show up online. You should be able to print your license once it has been renewed and may reprint as many copies as you need for each worksite.
Legislative Update – Garth Reynold, IPhA Executive Director provided this month’s update. The Spring Session of the General Assembly has yet to begin and SB772 was discussed with the Board during the last meeting. Garth briefly discussed HB0313 which revised the Nursing Practice Act and created a new level of Advanced Practice Registered Nurse with full practice authority. This new level of Advanced Practice Nurse has a much less stringent collaborative practice agreement but must be registered with the Department after completing at least 4000 hours of clinical experience and 250 hours of continuing education and attaining national certification. The rules are not even in draft form, so this level of Advance Practice Nurse will not exist for several months or more.
Next Meeting – The next meeting of the Board is set for March 13th to begin at 11:00 am in the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation Building at 320 W. Washington Street in Springfield. These meetings are open to the public and pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy students are encouraged to attend.
