Virginia Law

A. DMAS shall develop an educational program designed to further educate physicians and pharmacists to ensure that prescriptions are appropriate, medically necessary, and are not likely to cause adverse actions. The purpose of such program shall be to:

1. Identify and reduce the frequency of patterns of fraud, abuse, overuse, or inappropriate or medically unnecessary care among physicians, pharmacists, and patients, or associated with specific drugs or groups of drugs;

2. Identify and reduce the potential and actual severe adverse reactions to drugs; and

3. Improve prescribing and dispensing practices.

Such program shall include education on therapeutic appropriateness, overutilization and underutilization, appropriate use of generic products, therapeutic duplication, drug-disease contraindications, drug-drug interactions, incorrect drug dosage or duration of drug treatment, drug-allergy interactions and clinical abuse/misuse.

B. The educational program shall be accomplished through the use of interventions. The interventions shall be directed to physicians and pharmacists and shall address therapy problems or individuals identified in the course of prospective and retrospective drug use reviews as having exceptional drug utilization patterns. The educational program shall have at least four types of interventions which shall be used as appropriate. These interventions shall include:

1. Information dissemination sufficient to ensure the ready availability to participating physicians and pharmacists of information concerning the DUR Board's duties, powers, and basis for its standards;

2. Written, oral, electronic, and telephonic reminders containing patient-specific or drug-specific (or both) information and suggested changes in prescribing or dispensing practices, which is communicated in a manner designed to ensure the privacy of patient-related information;

3. Face-to-face discussions between health care professionals who are experts in appropriate and medically necessary drug therapy and selected prescribers and pharmacists who have been targeted for intervention, including discussion of optimal prescribing, dispensing, or pharmacy care practices, and follow-up face-to-face discussions; and

4. Intensified review or monitoring of selected prescribers or dispensers.

C. DMAS may establish the educational program through contracts with accredited health care educational institutions, state medical societies or state pharmacists associations/societies or other organizations, which may include, but shall not necessarily be limited to, a pharmacy benefits manager. The educational program will use, but not be limited to, as a basis for its educational activities the compendia and literature referenced in these regulations and data obtained primarily from the prospective and retrospective DUR process, and provided by the DUR Board, on common drug therapy problems and other utilization and drug therapy issues listed in these regulations. The educational program shall be based on recommendations submitted by the DUR Board.

D. A report shall be prepared by the DUR Board and submitted to the director at least semi-annually evaluating the success of the interventions, determining if the interventions improved the quality of drug therapy, and making recommendations for modifications in the program, if appropriate.