S-1144.1
SUBSTITUTE SENATE BILL 5019
State of Washington
69th Legislature
2025 Regular Session
By Senate Health & Long-Term Care (originally sponsored by Senators Chapman, Bateman, Christian, Dhingra, Harris, Riccelli, Saldaña, Slatter, and Wellman)
READ FIRST TIME 02/07/25.
AN ACT Relating to expanding the situations in which medications can be dispensed or delivered from hospitals and health care entities; and amending RCW 70.41.480 and 18.64.450 .
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:
Sec. 1. RCW 70.41.480 and 2024 c 251 s 2 are each amended to read as follows:
(1) The legislature finds that high quality, safe, and compassionate health care services for patients of Washington state must be available at all times. The legislature further finds that there is a need for patients being released from hospital emergency departments to maintain access to emergency medications when community or hospital pharmacy services are not available, including medication for opioid overdose reversal and for the treatment for opioid use disorder as appropriate , human immunodeficiency virus postexposure prophylaxis drugs, anti-infectives, and drugs that come prepackaged by the manufacturer . It is the intent of the legislature to accomplish this objective by allowing practitioners with prescriptive authority to prescribe limited amounts of prepackaged emergency medications to patients being discharged from hospital emergency departments when access to community or outpatient hospital pharmacy services is not otherwise available.