Time Sensitive Material...please read now!

Dear Pharmacies,

There are important matters at the level of the House Human Services committee that need our attention. SB397 is a bill that has sailed through the Senate with a unanimous vote of 50 to 0 and is at our back door. SB397 will give practitioners the ability to dispense medications to the public, just as pharmacies do, without a pharmacist on staff. There are some parts of the legislation that needs definitions as well as some expounding on who will actually dispense the drugs and who will counsel on the medications. One thing is clear... they don't want to pay a pharmacist to dispense or counsel medications in an "employer based onsite clinic"... and the question is how loosely this definition will be used. We all know where this is heading... huge patient safety concerns! If you work at a retail pharmacy, as I do, you know how devastating this can be. Physicians play a critical role in our community and I applaud their knowledge and prescribing practices; however, I believe that pharmacists also play a critical role in the healthcare system as well as the check-n-balances of that system…which should remain the same for the sake of our patients!

If every pharmacist receiving this could forward the message to all pharmacists they know, asking them to contact their area legislators on the House Human Services committee regarding SB397, asking those legislators to vote to table the bill or suggest "do not pass" that would be very helpful. You can use some of Becky Deschamps attached comments if you would like. Starla Blank has given a list of some of the pharmacists in home towns of legislators on the Human Services Committee, and Becky Deschamps has been calling those pharmacists yesterday and today to get the word out. We need to do this quickly, as SB397 won't sit in committee forever. The list can be found on Becky Deschamps' blog entitled "Current Legislation". Please act now... OR... at least please read through SB397 at Montana State Legislation and Becky Deschamps' blog.

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Thank you,

Sincerely,

Eric Shields, PharmD