5 days ago
Legislation allowing ADHD med refills for more than a month at a time gains speed at State House
Democratic lawmakers Sen. Alana DiMario of Narragansett and Rep. Michelle McGaw of Portsmouth are sponsoring not-quite-identical bills that would increase how much ADHD medication patients can receive at once. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
Availability of tightly regulated ADHD medications could improve under a pair of bills that continue to move through the Rhode Island General Assembly following a Senate floor vote Tuesday night.
Bill S795 by Sen. Alana DiMario, a Narragansett Democrat, passed 36-0 and now joins the amended version of bill H5866 by Portsmouth Democratic Rep. Michelle McGaw, which passed the House 70-0 on April 22. Now each bill awaits a committee hearing in the opposite chamber. Both bills would allow for non-opioid Schedule II stimulants like Adderall, Ritalin, and Vyvanse, which are commonly used as ADHD treatments, to be prescribed and dispensed in larger amounts for doctor and patient convenience.
Sen. Pam Lauria, a Barrington Democrat and nurse practitioner, stood to commend DiMario's legislation on the Senate floor, calling it 'an incredibly important bill, particularly as we are talking about the administrative burdens on primary care providers.'
'These are chronic medications that these people take every day, but every month, because of the very real safeguards for these medications, the extra time that it takes for primary care providers or psychiatrists… to do this work is cumbersome,' Lauria said.
The 'cumbersome' refill schedule is exactly what DiMario's legislation wants to fix. Under current federal rules, providers can write three separate 30-day prescriptions for a total 90-day supply. Some states have adopted revised rules that allow patients to pick up all 90 days' worth at once, as Massachusetts did in 2024.
In the Ocean State, however, patients still have to return to the pharmacy monthly and pick up the prescriptions one by one. Patients also have to contact their doctor to send in the second and third month's prescriptions, piling onto providers' workloads.
Alas, there's one important difference between the bills: DiMario's version allows for patients to fill all 90 days at once, while McGaw's amended version caps fills at 60 days.
DiMario said in a phone interview Wednesday that she believes the House and Senate will eventually agree on a version of the legislation as the state's legislative session winds down in the following weeks.
'We really believe that 90 days provides the most meaningful kind of time burden relief for patients and providers,' DiMario said. 'My position is that I'm strongly advocating for the 90 days, but I do believe that an agreement will be reached.'
Greg Paré, a Senate spokesperson, did not immediately have scheduling details for the bills Wednesday, and noted that the bills' different time frames 'will have to be addressed.'
McGaw agreed in a phone call Wednesday evening, saying that with the Senate's OK of a 90-day supply, the legislation is 'still sort of in limbo' until she can meet with the House committee chair and the senate's policy team.
McGaw originally proposed a 90-day supply but reduced it to 60 days after feedback from some prescribers. She thinks a single version of the bill will eventually emerge after more conversations, acknowledging that edits to not-quite-identical legislation in both chambers is not uncommon as the legislative session nears its end.
'I would be happy with either version, whether we decide on 60 or 90 days,' McGaw said. 'In either case, it helps to reduce some of the administrative burdens for our physicians, and also helps parents or patients for whom it's a challenge to go to the doctor every month and get a new prescription.'
On the Senate floor, DiMario said the bill builds on successful legislation last year that authorized electronic transfers of ADHD prescriptions, pending state adoption of new federal standards.
Both last year's and this year's ADHD drug bills are designed to alleviate headaches for patients and providers alike amid pill shortages ongoing since 2022, attributed to a number of factors, including a sharp increase in adult diagnoses. The Drug Enforcement Administration previously faced scrutiny for limiting production quotas of Schedule II drugs, but it increased some of those quotas in 2024.
An October 2024 edition of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report relayed that there were an estimated 15.5 million U.S. adults with an ADHD diagnosis in 2023; about half were diagnosed as adults. Roughly one-third of these adults take stimulant drugs for their condition, and shortages affected 71.5% of this population's access to their medications.
A 2025 article in the American Journal of Managed Care noted that stimulant prescriptions have almost doubled in the past 10 years.
'There is only so much pharmaceutical companies can do when demand severely outweighs supply,' the authors wrote.
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