More Prescription Pad Changes

The Indiana Board of Pharmacy has made more changes and recently reduced its list of approved prescription pad printers from nearly 300 to six. The pharmacy board also announced that printers who were not approved by March 1 could not reapply until August 2009.

Since this ruling caused such an uproar, the pharmacy board has changed its position and is now allowing printers to reapply up to two times before August 2009.

The official list of approved printers is constantly changing and can be seen at the following site. Approved printers.

For the past few years, Physicians have been required by Indiana law to write controlled substance prescriptions on compliant security paper to help combat the problem of forgeries and abuse.

Physicians using prescription pads from a printer not on the approved list should check their paper for compliance and contact their printers. A template for prescription pad paper is on the pharmacy board Web site. Although these prescription pads do help combat fraud, it is another hassle for offices and rules are changed without adequate notice in many instances.