Protocol · PharmD · Kentucky

Practice Protocol for Pharmacists in Kentucky

Required. Kentucky law names the instrument a Written Collaborative Care Agreement, and the clinical protocol is the content that instrument carries. Below: the board that governs it, what it must contain, and the terms it has to carry.

Practice authoritySupervision required
Written agreementAgreement required
What Kentucky calls itWritten Collaborative Care Agreement
Governing boardKentucky Board of Pharmacy
Agreement familyCollaborative Practice
Research date2026-09-03 · clauses 2026-09-03

Represents KY's pharmacist Collaborative Care Agreement (CRA) tier (KRS 315.010(5)), not base dispensing licensure, which needs no agreement and is out of scope here. Unlike NC's certified CPP tier, KY names no board-certification/residency requirement — any licensed pharmacist 'involved in patient care' may enter a CRA. No independence pathway found.

What a Kentucky Written Collaborative Care Agreement must contain

Governed by the Kentucky Board of Pharmacy. Each numbered item is a statutory requirement the Written Collaborative Care Agreement must satisfy.

  1. Kentucky does not require the Pharmacist to hold a collaborative care agreement in order to practice pharmacy generally. To manage a specific patient's drug-related health care needs in cooperation with the Physician, however, the Pharmacist and the Physician shall enter into a written collaborative care agreement, as authorized by KRS 315.010(4) and 201 KAR 2:220. The patient's drug-related health care needs must fall within the Physician's statutory scope of practice, and the patient must be referred by the Physician to the Pharmacist.

  2. The collaborative care agreement shall be signed and dated by each practitioner and each pharmacist who is a party to it, shall provide the method for referral of patients to be managed under it, and shall state the method for terminating it.

  3. The Written Collaborative Care Agreement also carries 1 scope, 1 education and 1 registration clauses, authored in the document itself.

Terms it has to carry

Ratio, proximity, chart review, meeting and prescribing terms the Written Collaborative Care Agreement has to carry, from Kentucky's supervision rules.

Proximity

Not codified — left to the agreement

Supervision ratio

Not codified — no cap on file

Chart review

Not codified — left to the agreement

Meeting cadence

Not codified — left to the agreement

Prescriptive authority

Covered by the practice agreement · no controlled-substance authority

Whether a Kentucky collaborative care agreement can authorize controlled-substance prescribing, as North Carolina's and Virginia's frameworks expressly do, is not settled; controlled substances are shown as not allowed as the conservative position. Confirm with the Kentucky Board of Pharmacy for a controlled-substance use case.

Written agreement

Required

Practice ownership (corporate practice of medicine)

Non-licensee ownership permitted — General pharmacy-permit ownership under KRS Ch. 315, assumed to follow the common pattern of non-pharmacist or corporate ownership with a pharmacist-in-charge; confirm the statute text

Materially more permissive than the healing-arts PSC/PLLC regime governing PAs and APRNs.

Sources for the supervision rules (2)
How the relationship works day to day
Who has to be where, how often you meet, and what the physician costs: Pharmacist in Kentucky on collaborativeagreement.com.

About Kentucky's rules

KY's PSC/PLLC statutes (KRS Ch. 274, 275) are commonly read to restrict ownership to persons rendering the 'same or related' professional service — a physician generally cannot co-own a single PSC/PLLC with a PA or APRN, unlike NC/VA's explicit combination statutes. Secondary-sourced interpretation, not a confirmed ruling — verify before relying on it. Kentucky opted out of the federal Medicare CRNA supervision requirement in April 2012; facilities may still impose their own.

Other clinicians in Kentucky: see the state overview.