Collaborative Practice Agreement · PharmD

Arizona Collaborative Practice Agreement (CPA) for Pharmacists

Required. The Collaborative Practice Agreement (CPA) is the written instrument Arizona law names for a Pharmacist working with a physician. Below: the board that governs it, what it must contain, and the terms it has to carry.

Practice authoritySupervision required
Written agreementAgreement required
What Arizona calls itCollaborative Practice Agreement (CPA)
Governing boardArizona State Board of Pharmacy
Agreement familyCollaborative Practice
Research date2026-09-03 · clauses 2026-09-03

Represents Arizona's Collaborative Practice Agreement (CPA) tier (A.R.S. § 32-1970), not ordinary dispensing licensure. CPA scope is permanently agreement-dependent with no independence pathway; pharmacist must follow the provider's written guidelines and may not deviate from them.

What a Arizona Collaborative Practice Agreement (CPA) must contain

Governed by the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy. Each numbered item is a statutory requirement the agreement must satisfy.

  1. The Pharmacist shall practice pursuant to a written Collaborative Practice Agreement ("CPA") with the Physician to initiate, monitor, and modify drug therapy or to provide disease management assistance, as authorized under A.R.S. § 32-1970. The CPA applies only to a patient with whom the Physician has a previously established provider-patient relationship.

    Source: A.R.S. § 32-1970

  2. No Arizona State Board of Pharmacy pre-approval or advance filing of the CPA is required; the Pharmacist shall instead maintain a copy of the CPA and make it available to the Board upon request.

  3. The Collaborative Practice Agreement (CPA) on file also carries 1 scope, 1 education, 1 registration, 1 authority clauses, generated in the document itself.

Statutes and rules cited

  1. A.R.S. § 32-1970statute

    Authorizes a collaborative practice agreement between a pharmacist and a provider with prescriptive authority to initiate, monitor, and modify drug therapy or provide disease management assistance; sets required agreement contents.

Terms it has to carry

Ratio, proximity, chart review, meeting and prescribing terms the agreement has to carry, from the state's supervision rules.

Proximity

Not codified — left to the agreement

Supervision ratio

Not codified — no cap on file

Chart review

Not codified — left to the agreement

Meeting cadence

Not codified — left to the agreement

Prescriptive authority

Covered by the practice agreement · no controlled-substance authority

Controlled-substance/Schedule eligibility is not addressed in the statute itself; A.A.C. Title 4 Ch. 23 pharmacy board rules may govern this but were not confirmed in this research pass — treat controlledSubstancesAllowed here as 'not confirmed either way,' not as an affirmative denial.

Written agreement

Required

Practice ownership (corporate practice of medicine)

Non-licensee ownership permitted — No pharmacist-ownership requirement located in this research pass; pharmacy permit/ownership detail lives in A.A.C. Title 4 Ch. 23, which was not confirmed in full.

Whether Arizona requires a licensed pharmacist-in-charge safeguard analogous to other states' PIC requirement was not separately confirmed in this research pass.

Legal sources for these rules (1)
How the relationship works day to day
Who has to be where, how often you meet, and what the physician costs: Pharmacist in Arizona on collaborativeagreement.com.

About Arizona's rules

Arizona has no explicit statutory CPOM ban; existing doctrine comes only from two optometry cases never applied to physician/PA ownership, making MSO tolerance a reasonable inference rather than a confirmed rule. NP/CNM/PMHNP have FULL practice authority with no collaborative agreement. PA's 2024 reform (A.R.S. Title 32 Ch. 25) removes the written agreement at 8,000 hours but still requires a designated collaborating physician/entity.

Other clinicians in Arizona: see the state overview.