Minnesota Board of Pharmacy - Minnesota State Legislature

• The Board has stopped directly administering all licensing examinations. Several decades ago,
the Board administered several exams: one to test an applicant’s knowledge of pharmaceutics,
medicinal chemistry, calculations and other subjects; a practical examination designed to assess
the applicant’s compounding competency; and a law exam. Exams were only administered
twice a year. Beginning in the 1970’s, the Board adopted the use of standardized, written
examinations developed by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) - but
continued to administer practical and state law exams. About a decade ago, the Board stopped
administering the state law exam, when NABP developed the Multistate Pharmacy
Jurisprudence Examination. The Board dropped the practical examination in 2004.
Consequently, pharmacist license applicants currently take only two computer-based,
psychometrically validated exams that are developed by NABP and administered at testing
centers under contract to NABP. They can take the examinations at any time and at testing
centers located in several parts of the state. This has saved staff time and reduced paper and
printing costs. In addition, it allows pharmacist license applicants far greater flexibility in
regards to taking the licensing examinations.
• Board Surveyors make every effort to coordinate complaint investigations with routine facility
inspections. For example, if a Surveyor has to investigate a complaint in Brainerd, he/she will
stay in the general area for up to several days and also conduct inspections of other pharmacies.
That makes for more efficient use of their time and decreases travel costs.
• The Board recently adopted a large package of rule changes, many of which were designed to
reduce the regulatory burden faced by the individuals and businesses that the Board licenses.
Some of the rule changes will also reduce the workload of the Board’s staff. In particular,
licensees will have to submit significantly fewer rule variance requests. That, of course, means
that Board staff will be processing fewer variance requests.
• The Board has contracted with vendors to provide information technology services related to
the Board’s licensing database and the Prescription Monitoring Program. It is much cheaper and
more efficient to have the vendors do most of this work rather than trying to have it all done in
house. The vendors provide similar services to other state agencies around the country, thus
achieving economies of scale that our Board cannot achieve. However, the interaction between
these two systems, coupled with a Board plan to implement an electronic document
management system, lead the Board to seek an increased appropriation to hire an information
technology specialist 3. The Legislature and Governor approved this request during the 2011
Special Session.
The health-related licensing boards have taken joint action to increase the efficiency with which we
perform our duties. Although we are independent state agencies, we work together in a variety of
ways, including:
• Our offices are all located in the same building at 2829 University Ave SE in Minneapolis.
With the assistance of the Department of Administration, we recently negotiated a new sevenyear
lease with the building owner that actually reduced our lease payments. We also jointly
lease and share three conference rooms and two rooms that house shared printers. (One of
those rooms also serves as a centralized mail room).
• We jointly purchase and share certain IT equipment such as network servers, printers and
copiers, a folding and envelope stuffing machine, audiovisual equipment, recording systems
and an electronic public notice board that is located in the lobby of the building.
• We jointly fund an Administrative Services Unit (ASU) which is staffed by individuals with
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