S. 636: Increasing the Safety of Prescription Drug Use Act of 2015
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S. 636: Increasing the Safety of Prescription Drug Use Act of 2015
114th Congress · introduced 2015-03-03 · Health · Latest: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
federal
Follow this bill, step by step
- Where it came from: introduced 2015-03-03 · official record
- Who proposed it: Sen. Udall, Tom [D-NM] · what a sponsor is
- What happened next: no floor votes in our records yet. Why?
- Where it stands now: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Not final yet: this can still change. We check for updates every day.
- If it becomes law and spends money: follow the money to money laws, then agencies and contracts and grants.
Official title
Increasing the Safety of Prescription Drug Use Act of 2015
Plain summary
Increasing the Safety of Prescription Drug Use Act of 2015 This bill amends the Public Health Service Act to revise, update, and expand state controlled substance monitoring programs, which ensure that prescription history information is accessible for investigations into drug diversion and errant prescribing and dispensing practices. A state's controlled substance monitoring program database must be interoperable with other states' databases and electronic health records, and must provide up-to-date patient information to practitioners. Practitioners and dispensers are required to use the database. Database information cannot be used to conduct a criminal investigation against a patient. Certain entities are allowed to make nonidentifiable information from a database available for research. Federal health care workers must screen patients for abuse of controlled substances, conduct brief interventions, and provide referrals for known or suspected abuse of controlled substances. Grants are established for: (1) a pilot project to develop a peer review process to evaluate prescribing and pharmacy dispensing patterns, (2) training health care providers to prevent controlled substance abuse, (3) evaluating the prospect of health professions boards reviewing the prescribing authorities of providers, and (4) developing criteria and processes that allow health professions boards or state agencies to certify education and training for informed and safe prescribing of certain controlled substances. Practitioners who register or renew a registration with the Drug Enforcement Administration to dispense or conduct research with controlled substances must have completed specified continuing medical education. A registered practitioner must screen patients for drug abuse before prescribing certain controlled substances. The Food and Drug Administration must consider whether naloxone (a drug used to rapidly reverse overdoses of heroin and other opiods) should be a behind-the-counter drug instead of a prescription drug. This bill amends the Controlled Substances Act to increase the number of patients a practitioner is allowed to treat by dispensing narcotic drugs for maintenance or detoxification.
Congressional Research Service summary (Introduced in Senate), quoted unchanged (nonpartisan). Read the source.
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What does this mean? (plain words)
Official text
Increasing the Safety of Prescription Drug Use Act of 2015
Source: Congressional Research Service summary (Introduced in Senate)
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How did my representative vote? · This bill's floor votes
Officials and money
Sponsor: Sen. Udall, Tom [D-NM] · 1 cosponsors
Cost estimate: No cost estimate published yet.
Cosponsors on this site
No linked floor roll calls in our collected records yet. This does not mean the bill has never had a vote. Check the official bill history.
Words on this page, explained (1)
- Bill
- A proposed law. It becomes law only if it passes the legislature and is signed by the president or governor (or a veto is overridden).
Plain meanings written from linked sources. All words.
Sources
- Congressional Research Service summary (Introduced in Senate)
- Congress.gov
- Data: GovInfo BILLSTATUS bulk data (Library of Congress), BILLSTATUS-114s636.xml <https://www.govinfo.gov/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/s>
Record fed-us-cong114-s636 · catalog fed-us-congress-bills-cong114 · updated 2026-11-15 by psicol fed-bills-cong114