What’s Next?

Substitute Senate Bill 5380 (Laws of 2019)

The legislature passed Substitute Senate Bill 5380, which increases access to evidence-based opioid use disorder treatment services, promotes coordination of services within the substance use disorder treatment and recovery support system, strengthens partnerships between opioid use disorder treatment providers and their allied community partners, expands the use of the Washington Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP), and supports comprehensive school and community-based substance use prevention services.

What does the new law mean for me, a prescriber?

Several areas may affect individual prescribers:

Section 5 and 6 requires the board to amend its opioid prescribing rules to require osteopathic physicians and physician assistants to notify their patients of the right to refuse an opioid prescription.

Section 16 requires all controlled substance prescriptions to be electronically communicated to a pharmacy. The Department of Health must develop a waiver process for this requirement for practitioners due to economic hardship, technological limitations that are not reasonably in the control of the practitioner, or other exceptional circumstances demonstrated by the practitioner.

Section 17 lists several requirements in the new law, such as requiring that a prescriber discuss the risks of opioids. Many of these have already been included by the recently adopted opioid prescribing rules. One of these requires a prescriber to discuss pain management alternatives.

Section 22 requires any facility, entity, office, or provider group with 10 or more prescribers to integrate its electronic health records with the PMP.

Where can I go for more information?

You can follow the board’s rulemaking efforts or keep informed of other topics of interest to the profession by subscribing to the board’s bulk email service, GovDelivery. On the Deptartment of Health Website, scroll to down to the bottom of the webpage, then click on the “Subscribe” button, and follow the prompts to choose the Osteopathic Board.