Section 26-3-3 - Drug product selection permitted; conditions; exception for prohibition; labeling. - New Mexico Statutes

26-3-3. Drug product selection permitted; conditions; exception for prohibition; labeling.

A.     Upon receipt of a prescription written by a licensed practitioner who may prescribe drugs for a drug for which one or more multiple-source drugs are recognized, listed as final determinations and published in the federal register by the federal department of health and human services, a pharmacist may dispense any one of the drugs that satisfies the final determinations so recognized and listed by the federal department of health and human services and is sold at a lower cost than the drug listed in the prescription.

B.     Upon receipt of a prescription written by a licensed practitioner for a drug that appears on the federal food and drug administration's approved prescription drug products with therapeutic equivalence evaluation list as supplemented, a pharmacist may dispense any of the therapeutically equivalent drugs that appears on that list and which is lower in cost than the drug listed in the prescription.

C.     Drug product selection shall be permitted only under circumstances and conditions set forth in Subsections A and B of this section unless the licensed practitioner prescribing prohibits drug product selection.  A licensed practitioner shall prohibit drug product selection by writing with his hand the words "no substitution" or the diminution "no sub" on the face of a prescription.

D.     If drug product selection occurs as permitted in Subsections A and B of this section, the pharmacist shall indicate on the label of the dispensed container the brand of drug prescribed and the name of the drug dispensed.

E.     A pharmacist may not select a therapeutically equivalent drug unless he passes on to the patient all savings between the net cost of the product prescribed and the product dispensed.

F.     For purposes of this section, "multiple-source drug" means a drug marketed or sold by two or more manufacturers, formulators or labelers.

G.     For purposes of this section, "therapeutically equivalent" means drug products which have the same amount of the active drug in the same dosage form which when administered can be expected to provide the same therapeutic effect.