A Chatham native decided to be the change he wanted to see in the world when he reached out to his state representatives in an attempt to better healthcare in Illinois.
One year later, Dr. Brandt Whitehurst’s conversation with state Sen. Steve McClure, R-Springfield, has brought about a new law allowing easier transfer of prescriptions – Whitehurst described the idea as “common sense.”
With a few exceptions, Senate Bill 3213 requires that pharmacies transfer sub-Schedule I drugs to another pharmacy once the bill-turned-law goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2027.
“Upon a patient’s request, a pharmacy must transfer the prescription to another pharmacy, including Schedule II controlled substances, if the prescription has been received but not yet filled,” the bill reads, “and a licensed pharmacy technician may perform the transfer if delegated by a pharmacist.”
Whitehurst, a surgeon at SIU Medicine, said Illinois’s past decision to require providers to prescribe medication electronically led to some unintended consequences.
“The state passed an electronic prescribing law several years ago… what we’ve seen in practice with this is a lot of inconvenience that adds stress to the patients and to the practitioners,” Whitehurst said. “In the old days, you would go with your paper script (and) if they didn’t have it, the script was in your hand, you just went wherever. The patient didn’t have to try to track down the doctor.”
In addition to the routine hurdles a patient might face when in need of a prescription after hours, prescribing laws were crafted, in part, to reduce the chances of doctors overprescribing medication – something prompted by the onset of the U.S. opioid epidemic. Ultimately, that became more work for nurses and other medical personnel, Whitehurst said.
“Illinois (state law does) not allow trainees who are on temporary medical licenses to have prescribing power and get a (Drug Enforcement Agency) number for the state, so they can’t prescribe, even though federally they could.” he said, “Many nurses have to make calls, get medication sent and have to track me down – and if I’m operating but we need this script to send the patient home, the patient’s waiting two hours to leave the hospital, and that’s not good for the hospital.”
He applauded the latest law, which attempts to rectify some of those challenges created by the state’s electronic prescribing laws. “This seems to be common sense stuff,” Whitehurt said.
The legislature agreed. Senate Bill 3213 was unanimously approved by the House and Senate, after committees in each chamber signed off without opposition.
Last year, Whitehurst tried getting a hold of his elected representatives but said McClure was the only one who responded to his inquiries.
“I sent an email to several of my elected officials and requested meetings. He’s the only one who even responded to me, and I was impressed with him because he actually took the time to meet with me face-to-face and gave me 30 minutes of time,” he said. “Regardless of your politics or your party, our elected officials – that’s what they’re supposed to be doing.
“Then lo and behold, a year later his office is like, ‘By the way, he put this bill on the floor and then later it got passed,’ so they even kept up with the progress,” Whitehurst said.
McClure, who went from being senator of District 50 to District 54 after the 2021 state redistricting, told Illinois Times his office gets calls everyday from constituents and other Illinoisans. District 54 sprawls across parts of 10 different counties.
“Really anybody that calls us, if they’re a constituent and they want to meet with me, we always schedule a meeting,” McClure said, crediting staff members with their attentiveness toward communication. “I have to give credit to my great staff to follow up with emails, to help me with research, to answer the phones and to get back to people and to be open in three offices, five days a week” in Effingham, Litchfield and Springfield.
“Constituent services have to be the No. 1 priority for any elected official,” he said. “This most recent session I got four bills passed; all four of those bills were ideas from constituents.”
The other bills focused on increasing local oversight of cemeteries, modifying service credit payments for teachers at private schools, and loosening the requirements for people with permanent disabilities to renew handicap parking placards. All received bipartisan support in both Statehouse chambers.
“The most powerful thing that a senator can do if they’re presenting a bill or trying to get a bill passed is to demonstrate with a real-world example – and that’s what these bills are doing, they are trying to solve real-world problems,” he said.
