Home Forums Discussions General Discussion EPCS in Multiple States

Well here is a good question, my practice is in a border town in CT, NY is 5 miles away and MA is 1 mile away, needless to say have patients in my practice from all 3 states. Some of these patients would like to use a pharmacy located in their hometown. If I send an EPCS to an out of state pharmacy doesn't the DEA require a separate DEA registration for that state and if I did get an addition DEA registration for another state how would that get registered into the EPCS part of Newcrops and appropriately picked when prescribing. I will ask Newcrops just wondering if anyone has dealt with this yet?

NewCrops sent the question to AC, AC remoted in and after looking around said "can't be done"
So do I make all patients use a CT pharmacy or 'risk' sending EPCS across cyberspace State lines without a valid DEA for the receiving state?

So I practice in an EPCS mandatory State yet can't send rx's to neighboring state nor hand a printed Rx to patient!!!

To quote: " Catcha 22, it's always Catcha 22" if you saw the movie you get the accent inflection

Hi Koby,

First, I contacted NewCrop, and the assistant director of the department of EPCS did not know the answer but passed it along to the President of NewCrop. However, I fail to see how AC would know and further do not understand how their remoting in would have a snow ball's chance in hell of eliciting the answer.

The answer is yes you can EPCS to New York state. According to the New York State Department of Health, Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement (1-866-811-7957):

"A practitioner who is not licensed or practicing in New York, but has a patient who uses a pharmacy in New York, does not have to register their certified EPCS software application with the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement to send electronic prescriptions for controlled substances to pharmacies in the state of New York."

They are only required to follow their state?s law and regulations.

www.health.ny.gov/professionals/narcotic

In reading the document, it is suggested that you call the pharmacy first, inform the pharmacist that you have read the state laws and statutes based on the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcements regulations, and understand that the State of New York allows pharmacies to accept prescriptions sent via EPCS as long as the prescriber follows the laws and regulations in his or her state.

This is for New York. I will now look at Massachusetts.

Section 18 of the laws pertaining to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, while extremely difficult to decipher, seems to indicate that physicians from Maine and other contiguous states may prescribe via EPCS.

Thanks Bert good digging up info, after reading your posts I found the Mass statute and think I'm OK, BCBS MA thinks I need a MA DEA number but no office location or place of practice in MA so I'm thinking not required my CT should be good.