Create an Industry Standard for Pharmacy Technician Scope of Practice and Entry-Level Requirements to Support Interstate Portability (Resolution 119-5-23)

RESOLUTION NO: 119-5-23
TITLE: Create an Industry Standard for Pharmacy Technician Scope of Practice and Entry-Level Requirements to Support Interstate Portability
ACTION: PASS

WHEREAS, on January 31, 2020, the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services issued a Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) Declaration in addition to guidelines and numerous amendments that allow qualified pharmacy technicians to provide childhood vaccines, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines, and COVID-19 testing¹; and

WHEREAS, various allowances were made per state-sanctioned state of emergency waivers and rules to expand the scope of practice for pharmacy technicians to better serve patients during the COVID-19 pandemic; and

WHEREAS, the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board, in collaboration with the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, convened the National Consensus Conference in Irving, TX, on February 14-16, 2017; and

WHEREAS, an advisory committee representative of all major practice settings identified that state variability in the regulation of pharmacy technicians poses risks for patients and the profession of pharmacy as published in the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy titled “Toward uniform standards for pharmacy technicians: Summary of the 2017 Pharmacy Technician Stakeholder Consensus Conference”²; and

WHEREAS, as pharmacists’ scope of practice expands to better serve the public, pharmacy technicians have assumed some of the technical duties that pharmacists previously were required to perform. As such, it is reasonable to expect that pharmacy technicians should be allowed to continue performing these expanded duties as contained in the PREP Act amendments; and

WHEREAS, uniform entry-level requirements, uniform role designation titles, and uniform regulations addressing pharmacy technician scope of practice will create an industry standard that can support portability, thereby allowing for increased support for pharmacists nationwide and enabling them to provide improved and more accessible patient care;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that NABP review the work within the profession that has been completed thus far to identify the baseline knowledge standard for pharmacy technicians; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that NABP convene a task force to review current state regulations and the industry standard recommendations, consider the expanded role pharmacy technicians assumed based on the PREP Act and state-specific state of emergency scope allowances, and recommend amending, if necessary, the Model State Pharmacy Act and Model Rules of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (Model Act) to ensure that regulations pertaining to pharmacy technicians are appropriately outlined to create unified definitions, qualifications, and designations that support interstate portability; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that NABP encourage boards of pharmacy to adopt the Model Act language pertaining to certified pharmacy technicians and certified pharmacy technician candidates to further support interstate portability in the interest of public safety.

(Resolution passed at the 119^th Annual Meeting in Nashville, TN.)

¹https://aspr.hhs.gov/legal/PREPact/Pages/default.aspx

²Zellmer W, McAllister E, Silvester J, Vlasses P. Toward uniform standards for pharmacy technicians: Summary of the 2017 Pharmacy Technician Stakeholder Consensus Conference. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 2017;74(17):1321-1322.