Isle of Wight County’s new system for tracking prescription drugs stored in ambulances is on track to go live Jan. 1.

County officials announced in October that they’d beat a now-extended Nov. 27 deadline to bring Isle of Wight’s Fire and Rescue service into compliance with changes in federal laws governing how emergency medical service agencies are allowed to dispense drugs.

Fire and Rescue Chief Garry Windley told county supervisors on Nov. 7 that Isle of Wight, Newport News, York County and Williamsburg were the only localities in the region to have received their federal Drug Enforcement Agency licenses as of that date. Windley said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will delay enforcement of a provision of the 2013 Drug Supply Chain Security Act, which had 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, provided those agencies yet to receive their DEA licenses can demonstrate good faith progress toward licensure.

Once enforcement begins, ambulance crews will no longer be allowed to exchange used containers for Schedule II through V drugs for unopened ones at hospitals.

The county had as of Nov. 7 spent roughly $82,000 to outfit the Isle of Wight and Windsor volunteer rescue stations as pharmaceutical dispensaries and outfit ambulances with safes that use radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags to keep track of their contents, Windley said.

As of the same date, the county had received all of its mobile drug safes and had installed them into nine ambulances. Three additional mobile safes had yet to be installed as of that date due to ambulances being out of service.

As of Nov. 7, the county was also waiting on the arrival of a stationary safe that will be installed at the Carrollton Volunteer Fire Department, which will serve as a third dispensary for the county, Windley said.

Windley credits county supervisors’ prompt action in August to amend Isle of Wight’s 2024-25 budget to cover the cost.

“We got ahead of the curve early. … there are a lot of agencies that ran into the funding roadblock that then put them behind the supply chain issue,” Windley said.

As of Nov. 7, Isle of Wight had trained 100 EMS providers across multiple career and volunteer agencies in the county on the new pharmacy program regulations. Windley said he also had to reassign an existing employee from operations to a new full-time pharmacy manager position.

”There is a lot of paperwork and back office stuff to make sure that you are in compliance with DEA,” Windley said.