Page 15 - April 2017 Newspaper

“Your Patient’s Pain Management and Low-THC Cannabis —

Where to Start”

I recently had the opportunity to attend the the registry to reflect the contents of the order. The physician must update the
South Florida Medical Cannabis Symposium for registry within days after any change is made to the original order and must
Physicians, presented by Canna Holding, along deactivate the patient’s registration when treatment is discontinued.
with physicians, attorneys, patient advocates and • A physician may not order more than a 45-day supply of low-THC or med-
other healthcare practitioners around the state. ical cannabis for a patient.
The symposium was a great educational session Once you have considered all of this, you can’t forget to have written policy
designed to give an initial understanding, cen- and procedures along with training for you and your team. It is important to
tered around education, of the endocannabinoid ensure you have a compliance framework in place, just like you see for hospitals
system, pain relief using cannabis, legal, and other or other practices.
physician concerns around cannabis. I spoke to Document, document, document! Did I mention you should document what
several attendees who had an interest but did not you are doing? The cannabis industry is heavily regulated and it is so important
know where to start. to have good document controls in place. When a risk event happens, you want
Here are a few actions I would suggest to get to be able to provide any records or documents in minutes and not hours. If you
started: are still keeping track of policies and procedures with paper and binders, it’s
BY TIM GUNTHER, 1. Florida Department of Health time to move towards the great digital divide.
Compassionate Use Site - This is the starting To help make the move, consider an online document management platform.
CHIEF STRATEGIST ,
point to understand the framework to get started. One that I use and recommend to clients is PowerDMS.com. It’s been success-
TGUNTHER GROUP
http://www.floridahealth.gov/programs-and-ser- fully implemented by over 300 entities in Florida alone, over 200 of which are
vices/office-of-compassionate-use/index.html. law enforcement who use it for their policy, procedure and training manage-
There is a section specifically for physicians. ment. This is a solution that will give you peace of mind with its version control,
2. Active Physician License audit capabilities, and overall control of your documents.
a. Unrestricted License as a Physician- per Florida Statue Chapter 458 or
b. Osteopathic Physician per Florida Statue Chapter 459 TGunther Group focuses on compliance and assists businesses with putting
3. Compassionate Medical Cannabis CME Course- This is a required prerequisite together a compliance framework with the use of technology and processes.
before getting authorized, and just because you take the class does not guarantee You can reach out to Tim Gunther by email, tim@tgunthergroup.com.
getting a license. You can access it at http://www.flcannabisce.com/. There is a fee to
take the class and at the time of writing it was $995.
After you meet those basic guidelines and get approved then you have to fol-
low several legal requirements, as stated on the Compassionate Use site:
• Physicians may only order low-THC or medical cannabis for a patient if he
or she has treated that patient during the immediate preceding three months.
• Physicians must determine that the risks of treating the patient with low-
THC or medical cannabis are reasonable in light of the potential benefit to the
patient.
• If a patient is younger than 18 years of age, a second physician must concur
with the low-THC or medical cannabis order, and such determination must be
documented in the patient’s medical record.
• An ordering physician must maintain a patient treatment plan that includes
the dose, route of administration, planned duration, and monitoring of the
patient’s symptoms and other indicators of tolerance or reaction to the order for
low-THC or medical cannabis. The physician must submit a patient treatment
plan for each patient quarterly to the University of Florida College Of Pharmacy,
or any time the plan changes.
• An ordering physician must enter an order of low-THC or medical cannabis
for the named patient into the Compassionate Use Patient Registry, and update

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South Florida Hospital News
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National Hospital Week
Annual Nurses Issue – Salute to Nurses
• Nursing Profiles
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