The policy as written causes barriers to patient care. Specific examples that have affected my personal clinical practice include:

• Delay in patient discharge from hospital due to needing physician name on post surgical opiate prescription from hospital in-house pharmacy.
• Delay in patient receiving post surgical opiate prescription sent to patient's local pharmacy due to physician name requirement. Patient unable to get pain medication and returned to ED.

This policy causes inconvenience to providers and patients that can cause significant delays to patient care. The policy prevents PAs from practicing to their appropriate and full scope of practice. PAs are trained to practice within a collaborative healthcare team and are utilized to provide access to patient care. Allow PAs to do this by removing this requirement!