Allowing oncologists to dispense cancer-treatment drugs could endanger patients’ lives, a Utah pharmacist warned lawmakers considering a change to state law.
Pharmacist Terry Bullard said that 25 percent of the chemotherapy orders she receives at the Intermountain Medical Center pharmacy in Murray are wrong.
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"Every oncologist in Utah makes mistakes. Pharmacists are there to make a second look," she said. "It only takes one little tiny mistake for these patients to die suddenly."
Bullard spoke against SB161 Tuesday before the Senate Business and Labor Committee. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, seeks to change state law that says physicians may administer medications, but only pharmacists may dispense them.
That means patients can get intravenous chemotherapy from a doctor, but must go to a drug store to fill prescriptions for medications cancer patients must take between chemotherapy sessions. Besides Utah, only Wyoming and Texas have such a law.
The committee advanced the bill, which had been tweaked twice since its introduction last week. New language ensures that doctors cannot make a profit on the drugs they would be allowed to dispense, and makes sure oncologists have to do the same type of tracking and reporting of drugs that pharmacists do.
Supporters say the bill would help make sure cancer patients have better access to newer drugs, which manufacturers increasingly are turning out in pills rather than intravenous treatments. Cancer survivors who spoke to the committee also said changing the law would help them avoid driving to drug stores when they are ill, susceptible to infections or under the influence of medications that make it unsafe to drive.
Bullard also cautioned that without professional pharmacists on hand, labeling prescriptions and counseling patients about medications would be left to untrained assistants. "That could be a 16-year-old receptionist that hasn’t even graduated from high school," she said. "Is that who you want your mother getting prescriptions from? Is that who’s going to be dispensing your life-threatening, very, very potent highly toxic medication?"
Bramble, who said he worked with pharmacists to revise the bill, said that all the other states that allow doctor dispensing have figured out the details. "We are the outlier in this," he said. "Every other state has made provisions for [dispensing] from a doctor’s office."
The bill now goes to the full Senate for consideration.
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