WKU News

In April the Kentucky Legislation passed, and Governor Beshear signed in to law House Bill 1, a bill proposed to control the abuse of prescription drugs. The law goes into effect July 20th and may affect you.

This law applies to all Schedule II medications and Schedule III medications containing Hydrocodone. This means that medications used to treat ADD/ADHD are covered by this law.

The law requires that prior to prescribing of a covered controlled substances, the practitioner must:

• Perform a complete history & physical and document it in the medical record
• Query KASPER (a registry of a patient’s prescriptions for all controlled substances) for   data available on the patient
• Document a written treatment plan stating the objectives of treatment
• Discuss and obtain written informed consent regarding the use and potential tolerance and drug dependence of controlled substances

There are further requirements for long term use of controlled medications.

This new legislation may affect how often you need to be seen and require some additional paperwork at certain visits.

If you have questions regarding House Bill 1, you may contact:

Governor Beshear: http://governor.ky.gov/Pages/contact.aspx  

Speaker of the House, Greg Stumbo: http://www.lrc.ky.gov/legislator/H095.htm 

Your local legislator: http://www.lrc.ky.gov/whoswho/email.htm 

Summary of House Bill 1 can be found here: http://kbml.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/65B22406-2177-4735-8DB8-B28F66903661/0/KBMLSummaryofHB1.pdf