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Electronic Prescribing Mandate for Controlled SubstancesNevada Revised Statutes (NRS) 639.23535 requires that all controlled substance (CS) prescriptions must be transmitted to a pharmacy by electronic prescribing (e-prescribing). While NRS 639.23535 took effect on January 1, 2021, the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy provided an exemption for practitioners by regulation.The law mandated that this exemption would expire on December 31, 2021...READ MORE

Attorney General Aaron Ford announced Thursday that Nevada would join a multi-state opiod settlement with drugmakers and distributors...Ford said that the state would receive around $285 million through a pair of settlements...Last year, Ford announced a $45 million settlement against one company involved in the opioid litigation. The lawsuit is being handled on a contingency fee basis for the state by Eglet Prince, the law firm where Ford worked as a private attorney before being elected attorney general in 2018. Ford, however, recused himself from the selection process...Ford in August announced that Nevada would opt out of a $26 billion multi-state settlement...READ MORE

Nevada Department of Corrections Director Charles Daniels testified...that of all the potential complications from death row inmate Zane Floyd’s proposed execution, he is most concerned about the state’s drug supply...“My primary concern, quite frankly, is that all the necessary pharmaceuticals will expire,” Daniels told U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware...State law authorizes Daniels to plan and carry out execution protocols. While he is required to consult with Nevada’s chief medical officer about the drugs the state plans to use, the officials do not have to come to an agreement...Floyd was sentenced to die for fatally shooting four people and gravely wounding another in a Las Vegas grocery store more than two decades ago. He also was convicted of repeatedly raping a woman before the shooting...READ MORE

Kris Engelstad McGarry has made no secret of her difficult relationship with the Nevada System of Higher Education’s Board of Regents...“It’s probably the only time you’ll hear me say this, but I have the regents to thank for it,” McGarry, trustee of the Engelstad Foundation...said. “Had they not been so difficult, we would never have found the necessity to go ahead and...do it on our own.”...The Nevada Health and Bioscience Corporation was established in 2019...The approximately 135,000-square-foot building, on Shadow Lane in Las Vegas...is ahead of schedule and expected to open in June 2022...A notable result of the new process has been a faster process without bureaucracy...“It was wonderful to work with the corporation because they could make decisions, and make them quickly and move quickly,” Atkinson, the former dean, said. “They did all the same things that the state would have done, but the state would have taken much longer to actually get it all accomplished...“I don’t think anybody but a private corporation could have actually incorporated it all and got it done so quickly,” she added...READ MORE

With Nevada hospitals reporting a staffing “crisis” and health officials reporting COVID-19 patient tallies at pandemic highs, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak highlighted a program...to enlist nursing students to help meet the demand for medical providers...“The state continues to work with all of our partners to leverage existing resources and break down barriers so Nevadans in need can access care,” the governor...said on a day that health officials reported what Dr. John Hess, a University of Nevada School of Medicine associate faculty member, called a “challenging time” with case counts “incredibly high right now.”...READ MORE

The first pill authorized in the U.S. for treating COVID-19 at home will initially be offered in Nevada primarily to patients in long-term care and skilled nursing facilities because of scarce supplies...The remainder, less than 10 percent of the state’s initial allotment of Pfizer’s antiviral medication Paxlovid, has been given to University Medical Center in Las Vegas and to Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, members of the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy said...The drug’s authorization is “hands down, next to the vaccine, the most significant milestone in the pandemic,” said Dr. Shadaba Asad, the medical director of infectious disease at UMC...Supplies of the Pfizer pill currently are extremely limited across the country. Nevada’s initial supplies are enough to treat 480 patients, with allocations expected to grow as production ramps up, pharmacy board executive secretary David Wuest said...READMORE

Nevada health officials have confirmed the state’s second confirmed case of the coronavirus caused by the highly transmissible omicron variant, this time in a rural county...The second case was found in Churchill County in northern Nevada and involved an unvaccinated woman in her mid-40s, according to the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory...READ MORE

Hospitals throughout Nevada are facing twin challenges as beds fill with COVID-19 patients and staff falls ill from the highly contagious omicron variant...“Nevada is experiencing an abrupt increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations, predominantly in the southern region following the holidays. People are flocking to hospital emergency departments seeking COVID-19 testing, compounding the staffing problem,” they said, describing the second week of January...“Hospitals are not over-run by a COVID-19 surge as much as being understaffed as employees in all fields report being sick and unable to work. This is also further compounded by a significant increase in people coming to the emergency department solely for testing. Hospitals are not testing sites,” the Nevada Hospital Association said...READ MORE

State corrections officials told a federal judge last week that they’re quickly running out time before a crucial lethal injection drug proposed for use in the execution of death row inmate Zane Floyd will expire...Nevada Department of Corrections Director Charles Daniels said in federal court that his chief concern with carrying out the execution is that the necessary drugs would expire before the state could proceed with its execution plan.His testimony followed days of hearings last week, during which medical experts called by the state made the case that the state’s proposed drug cocktail, never before used in carrying out a death sentence, would result in a painless death for Floyd...“My understanding is that it would be less painful than other methods,” said Daniel Buffington, a clinical pharmacologist who works at the University of South Florida. “It would reduce the individual's anxiety… It would be quick.”...
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