Isle of Wight County has beat a Nov. 27 deadline to bring its Fire and Rescue service into compliance with changes in federal laws governing how emergency medical service agencies are allowed to dispense drugs.

In 2013, Congress enacted the Drug Supply Chain Security Act, which set an enforcement date of Nov. 27 of this year for the required electronic tracking of prescription drug containers stored and dispensed by EMS agencies. Come that date, ambulance crews will no longer be allowed to exchange used containers for Schedule II through VI drugs for unopened ones at hospitals. The change, according to Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Chief Garry Windley, is intended to eliminate the possibility of losing track of used drugs should the containers be returned to a different hospital than the one from which they originated.

County supervisors approved a $158,000 budget amendment in August to cover the cost of outfitting the county’s Isle of Wight and Windsor volunteer rescue stations and ambulances with safes that use radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags to keep track of their contents. The cost also includes the expense of the county obtaining a Virginia Board of Pharmacy controlled substances registration, or CSR, and a federal Drug Enforcement Agency license which a 2017 amendment by Congress to the Controlled Substances Act now requires of EMS agencies.

“We are the leader in the state right now in this program,” County Administrator Randy Keaton told the supervisors on Oct. 17. 

Keaton said all required federal and state permits and licenses are complete.

“We’re ready to go,” he said, so much so that “much larger communities are calling us to see how we did it.”

Keaton credits the supervisors funding vote, despite conflicting and in some cases lack of information federal and state sources have provided to the county. According to Windley, it wasn’t until May 2 that Virginia’s Board of Pharmacy adopted emergency regulations for EMS agencies, which he said were based on proposed DEA regulations from 2020 that ultimately weren’t adopted.

The funding vote, Keaton said, allowed the county to purchase 15 safes – one for each rescue station and 13 mobile safes that can be mounted inside ambulances – which Windley said was a necessary first step before the county could submit its CSR application.

Isle of Wight was able to beat the rush by ordering its equipment well in advance of the Nov. 27 deadline. Now “it’s a backlog on some of the equipment,” Keaton said.

The supervisors discussed the matter ahead of voting on a list of legislative priorities they’ll send to state Sen. Emily Jordan, R-Isle of Wight, and Dels. Otto Wachsmann, R-Sussex, and Nadarius Clark, D-Suffolk, ahead of the start of the 2025 General Assembly session.

The list includes “funding for EMS pharmaceutical requirements.”

While Isle of Wight was able to absorb the additional $158,000 cost “there are a lot of communities that can’t,” said Assistant County Administrator Don Robertson.

Keaton said the county found cost savings when it was notified that hospitals would continue to exchange on a one-for-one basis Schedule VI drugs such as intravenous saline bags. Virginia is one of a handful of states to have a sixth level of classification for controlled substances.

Continuing to be able to exchange Schedule VI drugs will save the county an estimated $10,000 to $20,000, Keaton said.