Will Colorado License Pharmacy Technicians?
The State of Colorado and the Office of Policy, Research and Regulatory Reform is performing its 2018 Sunrise Review on Pharmacy Technicians and citizens of Colorado can voice their opinions on whether pharmacy technicians should be regulated and/or licensed in Colorado.
Click here to leave your opinion(s) on regulating Pharmacy Technicians in Colorado.
How many Coloradans did not realize that pharmacy technicians in Colorado were not licensed or regulated? Some pharmacy technicians may be certified, but there is no state governing body that licenses or regulates the actions of pharmacy technicians.
Properly trained pharmacy technicians are, undoubtedly, invaluable assets to pharmacists and each pharmacy, but they also are human and make mistakes. Sometimes these critical errors are not caught by pharmacists on the final check and, unfortunately, result in patient harm or even death. The licensed Colorado pharmacist that misses the error, however, is the only professional that currently gets reprimanded by a regulator agency – i.e. the Colorado Board of Pharmacy – for such an error.
The pharmacy profession continues to rapidly change as pharmacists, the medication experts, focus on more clinical roles and direct patient care while maneuvering away from some of the more technical pharmacy job duties. With the continued expansion of pharmacist services, some states now allow pharmacy technicians to perform technical tasks that were previously restricted to pharmacists.
Historically pharmacy technicians have been responsible for receiving prescription requests, counting tablets, labeling prescription bottles, preparing insurance claim forms and performing administrative functions like answering phones, stocking shelves, placing deliver orders and operating cash registers.
The Pharmacy Technician Certification Board (PTCB), which started certifying pharmacy technicians in 1995, introduced some practice standardization, but, as pharmacy technician’s roles expanded over the years, each state board of pharmacy started enacting their own rules, requirements and regulations regarding pharmacy technician certification, regulation or licensure.
Today, the regulation of pharmacy technicians remains a balancing act. Only a handful of states, including Colorado, have chosen to not regulate pharmacy technicians, arguing, incorrectly perhaps, that pharmacy technicians are not a threat to the health, safety and welfare of all Coloradans since, ultimately, the pharmacist is the final check.
Over the past decade, however, more and more states started to require certification and licensure as part of being employed as a pharmacy technician.
The Idaho Board of Pharmacy’s (Idaho Board) regulation of pharmacy technicians is one example of this evolution. The Idaho Board’s regulation of pharmacy technicians is broadly focused on promoting safe and effective pharmacy practice while protecting public health The Idaho Board rules focus on pharmacist delegation where a pharmacist can use his or her own professional judgment in deciding not to delegate a specific task to a specific technicians.
The Idaho Board implemented many novel rules as they addressed the expanding role of pharmacy technicians. Two new rules, for example, allow a (1) certified technician to receive a verbal prescription drug order from a prescriber or their agent and reduce the order to writing and (2) transfer prescription drug order information for the purpose of filling or refilling a medication; both roles historically reserved only for a licensed pharmacist or pharmacy intern.
Idaho also became the first state allowing pharmacists to delegate the technical task of vaccine administration (inserting the syringe into the patient’s arm and pressing down on the plunger) to a certified pharmacy technician who has completed the requisite immunization administration training and who is certified in basic life support for healthcare professionals.
As the State of Colorado and the Office of Policy, Research and Regulatory Reform performs its 2018 Sunrise Review on Pharmacy Technicians, I encourage every pharmacist, health care professional or citizen of Colorado to leave their opinions on whether pharmacy technicians should be regulated and/or licensed in Colorado.