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Collaborative Practice Agreement · PharmD

Indiana Written Collaborative Practice Protocol for Pharmacists

Required. The Written Collaborative Practice Protocol is the written instrument Indiana 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 Indiana calls itWritten Collaborative Practice Protocol
Governing boardIndiana Board of Pharmacy
Agreement familyCollaborative Practice
Research date2026-08-21 · clauses 2026-09-03

Indiana's is a narrow protocol-based 'drug regimen adjustment' tier (IC 25-26-16), not a broad collaborative-practice-agreement model. Outside hospitals, the pharmacist must be employed by or under contract with a physician, physician group, or outpatient clinic AND under 'direct supervision' (IC 25-26-16-4.5) — so an ordinary community pharmacist cannot access it. The pharmacist may only adjust therapy for a condition the patient has already seen a physician for.

What a Indiana Written Collaborative Practice Protocol must contain

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

  1. Indiana does not require the Pharmacist to hold a collaborative practice protocol in order to practice pharmacy generally. To provide drug therapy management services to a specific patient, however, the Pharmacist shall do so under a written collaborative practice protocol with a supervising practitioner, as authorized by Ind. Code § 25-26-16-4.5. The supervising practitioner must be a physician, or an advanced practice registered nurse or physician assistant who has been delegated prescriptive authority, and must be readily available to consult with the Pharmacist while protocol services are being provided.

  2. The protocol shall define the nature, scope, conditions, and limitations of the patient care and drug therapy management services the Pharmacist may provide, consistent with achieving the desired patient outcomes. No filing of the protocol with the Indiana Board of Pharmacy or the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana was identified as required; the protocol shall instead be kept at the Pharmacist's practice site and made available for inspection.

  3. The Written Collaborative Practice Protocol on file also carries 1 scope, 1 education, 1 registration clauses, generated in the document itself.

Statutes and rules cited

  1. Ind. Code § 25-26-16-4.5statute

    Authorizes a pharmacist to provide drug therapy management services to a patient under a written collaborative practice protocol with a supervising practitioner.

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

pharmacist practicing outside a hospital: Available remotely (no on-site requirement)

IC 25-26-16-4.5(b) defines 'direct supervision' as the supervising physician, qualifying APRN, or PA with delegated prescriptive authority being 'readily available to consult with the pharmacist while the protocol services are being provided.' Coded TELECOMMUNICATION: it is a live-availability standard, not a physical-presence or mileage one. Note it binds DURING the service, which is tighter than a general on-call obligation.

pharmacist practicing in a hospital: Available remotely (no on-site requirement)

IC 25-26-16-4 applies instead: the pharmacist is 'supervised by a physician as required under the protocols of the facility.' The statute sets no proximity standard of its own — the facility's protocol does. Coded TELECOMMUNICATION as the closest available value; treat it as 'not codified at the state level' rather than as an affirmative finding that remote availability suffices.

Supervision ratio

Not codified — no cap on file

Chart review

Not codified — left to the agreement

Meeting cadence

Annually

IC 25-26-16-7: a protocol developed under the chapter 'must be reviewed at least annually.' A protocol-review cadence, not a chart-review quota — Indiana codifies no percentage for pharmacists. IC 25-26-16-6 adds a real administrative friction point: except for adding or deleting authorized practitioners and pharmacists, ANY modification to a written protocol 'requires the initiation of a new protocol' rather than an amendment. IC 25-26-16-8 separately requires documentation showing 'adequate, consistent, and regular communication' with the authorizing practitioner, and immediate entry of any regimen change in the patient's medical record — but sets no frequency for either.

Prescriptive authority

Covered by the practice agreement · no controlled-substance authority

IC 25-26-16 is silent on controlled substances and DEA scheduling entirely — this is genuine statutory silence, not merely an unresolved search. Coded False as an INFERENCE from the 'physician-first' structure, the same reading applied to Texas's pharmacist entry; flagged as an inference rather than an explicit statutory prohibition. SEPARATE AND UNVERIFIED: Indiana pharmacists also hold narrow independent authority outside IC 25-26-16 — immunizations under a standing order, prescription, or protocol (IC 25-26-13-31.2), and reportedly self-administered hormonal contraceptives, which an April 2026 Board of Pharmacy final rule (856 IAC, LSA #25-798) is said to have moved from a health-commissioner standing order to a statewide protocol with the pharmacist as prescriber of record. The IARP register page for that rule returned an empty SPA shell; the description is secondary-sourced only and is NOT relied on for any coded rule here.

Written agreement

Required

Required only for the protocol-based drug-regimen-adjustment scope tracked here (IC 25-26-16). Ordinary dispensing under a pharmacist's base license needs no protocol at all. Note the instrument is a physician-adopted PROTOCOL rather than a negotiated bilateral agreement: IC 25-26-16-5(b) makes the physician 'the ultimate authority regarding the terms, implementation, revision, and renewal of the protocol,' subject only to a duty to consult a pharmacist. No filing with the Board of Pharmacy or PLA is required; the protocol is kept and produced on inspection.

Practice ownership (corporate practice of medicine)

Non-licensee ownership permitted — Indiana does not require pharmacist ownership of a pharmacy. Every pharmacy permit application must name a qualifying pharmacist who is in full responsible charge of the pharmacy's legal operation (IC 25-26-13-17 area; 856 IAC 1-7-4), but the ownership of the business itself is not licensee-restricted — the qualifying-pharmacist safeguard, not equity, is the control mechanism. Materially more permissive than the medical/APRN entity rules above. SECONDARY-SOURCED: this ownership point was confirmed via Board of Pharmacy guidance summaries rather than by reading IC 25-26-13-17's full current text.

Pharmacists are absent from IC 25-22.5-1-2(a)(22)'s health-care-organization ownership list, but that list governs exclusion from the MEDICAL Practice Act and is not the operative rule for pharmacy ownership.

Legal sources for these rules (4)
How the relationship works day to day
Who has to be where, how often you meet, and what the physician costs: Pharmacist in Indiana on collaborativeagreement.com.

About Indiana's rules

Indiana requires a career-long collaborative practice agreement for every APRN role except CRNAs (IC 25-23-1-19.4(c)); APRN prescribers additionally face a codified 5%-of-charts random-sampling review (848 IAC 5-1-1). CRNAs instead face a stricter rule — physician direction and immediate presence (IC 25-23-1-30). Widely repeated reports that Indiana enacted full practice authority in 2026 are unsupported: HB 1116, HB 1129 and SB 60 all failed. Indiana's corporate-practice doctrine is comparatively permissive.

Other clinicians in Indiana: see the state overview.