Protocol · PharmD · Louisiana
Practice Protocol for Pharmacists in Louisiana
Required. Louisiana law names the instrument a Collaborative Drug Therapy Management (CDTM) Order Set, 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.
Represents Louisiana's pharmacist Collaborative Drug Therapy Management (CDTM) authority, not ordinary licensure — base dispensing and statutory limited authority need no physician agreement and are out of scope here. CDTM is permanently order-set-dependent, with no independence pathway found. Excludes controlled substances and drugs of concern entirely.
What a Louisiana Collaborative Drug Therapy Management (CDTM) Order Set must contain
Governed by the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy. Each numbered item is a statutory requirement the Collaborative Drug Therapy Management (CDTM) Order Set must satisfy.
Louisiana does not require the Pharmacist to hold a collaborative drug therapy management agreement in order to practice pharmacy generally. To manage the disease-specific drug therapy of a particular patient of the Physician, however, the Pharmacist may voluntarily agree with the Physician to do so under a written Collaborative Drug Therapy Management ("CDTM") order set, within a predetermined range of medication selected by the Physician, consistent with the Louisiana Pharmacy Practice Act and the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy's CDTM rules.
A CDTM order set is valid for no longer than one (1) year and shall be reviewed, updated as appropriate, and re-signed by the Pharmacist annually. The Pharmacist may not substitute a chemically dissimilar drug product for the one selected by the Physician without the Physician's explicit consent.
- The Collaborative Drug Therapy Management (CDTM) Order Set 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 Collaborative Drug Therapy Management (CDTM) Order Set has to carry, from Louisiana's supervision rules.
Proximity
On-site presence required
The pharmacist must 'be geographically located to be physically present to provide pharmacist care' to the patient (LAC 46:LIII.523), an on-site standard that is unusual among CDTM and CPA frameworks, most of which require only telecommunication availability.
Supervision ratio
Not codified — no cap on file
Chart review
Not codified — left to the agreement
Meeting cadence
Quarterly
The pharmacist must provide status reports on the patient to the collaborating physician at least quarterly, and remain available through direct telecommunication for consultation (LAC 46:LIII.523).
Prescriptive authority
Covered by the practice agreement · no controlled-substance authority
May not initiate or discontinue drug therapy except as specified in the physician's order set, and may not substitute drugs without explicit written physician consent; controlled substances and 'drugs of concern' are excluded entirely from CDTM scope (LAC 46:LIII.523).
Written agreement
Required
Required, but structured differently than the APRN CPA: Louisiana's CDTM framework uses a per-patient written 'order set' signed by the collaborating physician rather than one standing practice-wide agreement — functionally similar in effect, but not the same document type.
Practice ownership (corporate practice of medicine)
Non-licensee ownership permitted — No pharmacist-ownership requirement identified for Louisiana pharmacy permits; assumed to follow the common pattern of corporate ownership with a pharmacist-in-charge (Pharmacy Practice Act, R.S. 37:1161 et seq., not confirmed)
Flagged as an unconfirmed inference — verify against the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy's actual permit-ownership rules before relying on this.
Sources for the supervision rules (2)
About Louisiana's rules
Louisiana remains a reduced-practice state for NPs; no SAVE Act-style full-practice-authority reform has passed. LA Admin. Code tit. 46 § 7911.A.5 references an hours-based exemption from the CPA requirement for NPs, CNMs and CNSs, but secondary sources give conflicting hour figures (1,000 vs. 2,080); confirm the threshold and resulting scope with LSBN before relying on it.
Other clinicians in Louisiana: see the state overview.