About the standard
CPSA issued the Cannabis for Medical Purposes (CMP) standard of practice in April of 2014, due to a need to provide physicians with direction on the use of cannabis for medical purposes, to ensure public safety and to provide a means of monitoring the authorization of cannabis for medical purposes.
The standard required physicians to register with CPSA as “authorizers” and submit a Patient Medical Document for each authorization. These documents are manually tracked for CPSA’s Cannabis for Medical Purposes program, using TPP Alberta infrastructure. As cannabis does not have a DIN, the information must be collected separately and is not included in Alberta Netcare, Pharmaceutical Information Network (PIN).
CPSA receives approximately 6,000 authorizations (Patient Medical Documents) per month. The manual entry of this data is resource-intensive and the cost of monitoring medical cannabis is significant (Resources and statistics memorandum).
CPSA has not had any requests for this data from external sources apart from two research requests, and has had one intervention using authorization information for patients under 18 years of age.
Since legalization of recreational cannabis in 2018, there has been a downward trend in the number of authorizations. Health Canada data indicates this number decreased in Alberta from 110,189 in October 2018 to 63,359 in June 2020.
Health Canada provides a quarterly report for any physician authorizations over 25 grams per day of cannabis, for patients who grow their own CMP. This may be useful information for monitoring purposes. Review of this information does not indicate inappropriate or unsafe authorizations.
Changes in the draft
- Remove the requirement for physician authorizers to submit a Patient Medical Document, while noting Health Canada’s requirements for submission have not changed.
- Discontinue CPSA’s monitoring of cannabis for medical purposes.
- Continue to require physicians to notify the Cannabis for Medical Purposes program before beginning to authorize medical cannabis, which will allow us to provide physicians with educational resources and updates on CMP.
- Retain the requirements for:
- documentation of evaluation
- risk assessment
- informed consent
- review of prescription database
- compliance with provincial and federal regulations
- retaining copy of medical document
- re-evaluation
- Modify re-evaluation frequency to at least once every six months to reduce barriers to access.
- Clarified expectations regarding authorizing for patients without a longitudinal treating relationship or direct communication with a primary care provider who has a longitudinal treating relationship with the patient
- Retain prohibitions on:
- dispensing or providing cannabis to any patient or person
- applying to become a licensed producer
- accepting incentives or rebates for providing authorizations
- charging patients or licensed producers for activities associated with authorizing medical cannabis
Explore the changes in the draft standard even further
Your opinion matters
Any changes to CPSA Standards of Practice impact your day-to-day practice. Your input is vital to ensuring the standards strike an appropriate balance between serving patient needs and setting reasonable expectations for your medical practice.
This consultation closed March 17, 2021, thank you for your participation and feedback. Once amendments are finalized and approved by CPSA Council, physicians will be notified and made aware of any new expectations via The Messenger newsletter.
We respect your privacy
All feedback is subject to the CPSA’s Privacy Statement. CPSA reviews all comments before publication to ensure there is no offensive language, personal attacks or unsubstantiated allegations.
CPSA members, partner organizations, other health care professionals and Albertans were invited to provide feedback from Feb. 16-March 17, 2021. Council will consider non-nominal feedback when approving final amendments to the standard this spring.
Feedback on Consultation 020
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