House passes Borowski bill to simplify electronic prescription transfers between pharmacies & align with federal standards
Rep. Lisa Borowski March 19, 2025 | 2:24 PM
HARRISBURG, March 19 – The PA House unanimously passed legislation today authored by state Rep. Lisa Borowski that would simplify prescription transfers between pharmacies and align Pennsylvania law with federal regulations, saving time and money for patients, doctors, and pharmacies.
“A shortage of prescription stimulant medications hit nationwide around October of 2022 and is still impacting their supply today. I’ve heard from dozens of families in my district whose lives are regularly upended when their usual pharmacy has run out of their or their child’s prescription, because these medications are classified as “schedule II” by the DEA and therefore can’t be transferred under Pennsylvania law,” Borowski said. “The DEA amended federal regulations to accommodate this challenge, but so far Pennsylvanians have been unable to benefit because of our law. It’s time to fix that – hundreds of thousands of children and adults are waiting.”
In response to the persistent shortage, in August 2023, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration changed the regulation that controls the transfer of electronic prescriptions for controlled substances (schedules II-V), giving patients the ability to request their prescription be transferred to another pharmacy without having to go back to their practitioner to initiate the request.
Prior to this change, patients would have to go through their practitioner to cancel their prescription and have it re-issued to a different pharmacy. Unfortunately, this taxing and time-consuming process is still the case for patients and practitioners in Pennsylvania, because state law still prohibits prescription transfers of schedule II-controlled substances.
House Bill 60 would align Pennsylvania’s policy for schedule II medications with the federal regulation, permitting one pharmacy to electronically transfer a prescription to another as long as the drug is deemed transferrable by federal law – providing a solution for when the medication is out of stock at the original pharmacy.
The conditions treated by these stimulant medications include attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), narcolepsy, and depression. Just one missed dose of these medications can put a patient at risk of withdrawal symptoms, injury, and overdose.
"This is a very simple fix we can make as lawmakers for a very big problem, a straightforward change that would immediately impact Pennsylvanians’ health for the better,” Borowski said. “I can’t think of any reason the Senate should hesitate to quickly to do their part to protect people from experiencing harmful gaps in their treatment that could have been easily avoided.”
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