AMA to protect patient access to medications

Complications arise if a pharmacist objects to filling a prescription, but the American Pharmacists Assn. recognizes that as a right.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. July 11, 2005.

Chicago -- The American Medical Association is taking new steps to guarantee that patients are not denied access to medication when pharmacists refuse on moral grounds to dispense drugs.

The AMA House of Delegates, meeting here in June, adopted new policy stating that the Association supports legislation that requires pharmacists or pharmacy chains to fill valid prescriptions or make an immediate referral to another pharmacy. Delegates also voted to press for new laws that would allow physicians to distribute medication to their patients when there is no willing pharmacist within a 30-mile radius.

"The AMA strongly believes that patients have to have access to their medications," said AMA Trustee Peter W. Carmel, MD, a pediatric neurosurgeon from New Jersey.

Delegates were responding to reports nationwide that some pharmacists refused to fill certain prescriptions, such as emergency contraceptives, based on moral objections. Physicians have complained that some pharmacists also refused to return the prescriptions, making it more difficult for patients to get medicine.

Several medical organizations, including the American College of Physicians and American Academy of Family Physicians, said 14 states had introduced conscience-clause legislation to protect pharmacists who refuse to distribute medication based on religious, moral or personal grounds, and nine states had proposed measures allowing refusal for any reason.

The Washington, D.C.-based American Pharmacists Assn. (APhA) has policy that recognizes a pharmacist's right to exercise conscientious refusal. The conscience-clause policy also "supports the establishment of systems to ensure a patient's access to legally prescribed therapy without compromising the pharmacist's right of conscientious refusal."