DEA issues new guideline to ease delay in prescriptions for nursing home residents

The New York Times: "The Drug Enforcement Administration has issued a new guideline intended to help ease the delay some nursing home residents face in receiving certain painkillers and anti-anxiety medications. Physicians may now authorize nurses employed by long-term care facilities to phone in their oral prescriptions for these controlled substances to pharmacies, the agency said in a policy statement published on Wednesday in the Federal Register, the daily publication of changes to government rules. It is already a common practice for nurses who work at hospitals or for doctors in private practice to transcribe and transmit such prescriptions. But only doctors and certain other medical professionals can prescribe medications." Experts believe the new guidelines may speed up the process of getting prescriptions (Singer, 10/6).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.