What a way to start the month of April!
Early Saturday morning, at about 1:30 a.m., the Kansas Legislature reached First Adjournment, which is the end of its main part of the 2022 Session. In the last few days of the session, pharmacy was pretty successful.
House Substitute for SB 28 (SB 28) - Enacting the Pharmacy Benefits Manager Licensure Act and Requiring Licensure Rather Than Registration of Such Entities
On Monday, the House passed SB 28, 120-2, and on Wednesday, the Senate concurred with the changes made by the House to SB 28 (39-0). Now the bill is on the way to the Governor for signature. This bill is the PBM Licensure and Regulation bill. The bill does three main things:
It changes the requirement for PBMs to be registered to a requirement to be licensed.
It sets up the basic regulatory framework allowing the Kansas Insurance Commissioner to effectively discipline PBMs for breaking state or federal law, violating rules and regulations or directives of the Insurance Commissioner, committing fraud, and for not renewing in a timely manner.
Adjusted the MAC Appeal law to enumerate what a PBM could ask for from a pharmacy in support of a MAC appeal.
Most importantly, House Sub for SB 28 gives the Insurance Commissioner the authority to license and oversee PBM licensee activities.
We will provide additional information on this bill during a series of members-only Zoom meetings over the next few weeks. Watch your inbox for dates, times, and registration information.
SB 200 - Expanding the Pharmacist's Scope of Practice to Include Initiation of Therapy for influenza, Strep Throat or Urinary Tract Infection, Pursuant to a Statewide Protocol Adopted by the Collaborative Drug Therapy Management Advisory Committee
SB 200 allows the Collaborative Drug Therapy Management Advisory Committee (CDTM) to develop protocols allowing pharmacists to test patients for influenza, strep, and unitary tract infections. Upon a positive test result, the pharmacist would be allowed to dispense medications as outlined in the protocol.
During conference committee work, the legislature also included what had been HB 2253 (Amending the Prescription Monitoring Program Act) into the bill. This part of the bill makes several adjustments to the law governing K-TRACS; including allowing delegates, adds some data to the list of what can be submitted to K-TRACS, further outlines rules of usage for the data in K-TRACS, addresses information retention, and adds an APRN to the advisory committee.
We will have more information coming out next week on non-pharmacy-specific bills that were passed that might be of interest to members.