Maryland: What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate

So Maryland has a new law — it requires all pharmacies licensed in the state to submit dispensing data on non-controlled substances to the state’s health information exchange, called CRISP. That’s fine, no problem there. 

What is a problem, though, is that the state hasn’t been very good at communicating this new requirement to pharmacies, even though it comes out of a law passed in 2022. As we wrote in a letter to the Maryland Board of Pharmacy, even the board’s latest newsletters don’t mention the new requirement, despite it having taken effect Sept. 1.

“[W]e have heard from multiple member pharmacies that they were unaware of the obligation to report non-controlled dispensing data daily,” we wrote, and, given the scope of this new requirement, we hoped the board would both communicate it more clearly to pharmacies as well as exercise enforcement discretion “for a reasonable transition period, allowing pharmacies time to modify their systems, workflows, and reporting processes.”