FRANKFORT — If you take Ambien for sleep problems or have a child who is prescribed Ritalin for more than three months, the state is going to track those prescriptions.

That’s not quite what House Bill 1 — the so-called “pill mill bill” passed in the June special session of the General Assembly — called for, but those are contained in emergency regulations filed Friday by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and boards regulating various medical providers. And not everyone is happy.

Rep. John Tilley, D-Hopkinsville, the co-chairman of the HB 1 Implementation and Oversight Committee, said, “there’s an honest debate” about why the cabinet and various medical licensure boards wrote more expansive regulations that track all Schedule II and III drugs and 15 specific Schedule IV drugs. The statute only called for tracking Schedule II drugs and those Schedule III drugs which contain Hydrocodone. The law is intended to shut down cash pill mill clinics and address the “epidemic” of prescription drug abuse.

Among the 15 specified Schedule IV drugs are Ambien, a common sleep aid; Valium; Librium; anorexic drugs; and Soma. Tilley said those drugs are often abused and he understands why the cabinet and medical boards want to track them.

Ritalin, a drug commonly prescribed for patients with ADHD (Attention Deficit, Hyperactivity Disorder) is a schedule II drug.

The regulation proposed by the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, exempts the initial prescription of Ritalin for patients under 18 from a Kentucky All-Substance Prescription Electronic Reporting system or KASPER report, according to KBML General Counsel Lloyd Vest.

But prescriptions for use beyond 30 days will be subject to KASPER notification and reporting.

“The exemption is only for the initial prescription, so it doesn’t apply on an ongoing basis,” said Sheila Schuster, a clinical psychologist and advocate for mental health and health care issues. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

But Vest said there is evidence some parents “doctor shop” for Ritalin prescriptions for their children, perhaps to make easier to control. Tilley said there are also reports that some adults shop for Ritalin prescriptions for children but then take the drug themselves.

Julianne Ewen, an Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner from Lexington, said the added reporting requirements have led some practitioners to cease prescribing the drug, causing parents and children to scramble for prescriptions before school begins next month. Ewen conceded there is abuse of the drug, “but it’s not widespread.”

Dr. Steven Stack, an emergency room physician from St. Joseph East, told the oversight committee the emergency regulations which were filed Friday “have gone well beyond the initial intent” of the legislation and will “result in unnecessary suffering in the commonwealth with patients not getting the care they need.”

He cited the hypothetical example of an 80-year-old patient with chronic pain, wondering what is the value of a KASPER report on such patients. And he said running KASPER reports on every patient requires “enormous time.”

Tilley said the law and regulations aren’t targeted toward such patients but he also said some physicians have told him KASPER reports on patients like the 80-year-old can prevent prescriptions which might adversely interact with other medication the patient is taking.

The emergency regulations may be altered before they are finally entered in September and the General Assembly could revise the law in the 2013 session.

Tilley said he thinks it’s too early to know if that needs to be done, but “I wouldn’t be opposed to (revisions) if we need to make them.”

The committee also heard from Mary Begley, general counsel for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, and David Hopkins, KASPER program manager.

Hopkins said until recently Xanax for instance was the most reported abused drug, but has been surpassed by Oxycodone. The most abused drug in Kentucky is Hydrocone.

Begley reported on the effort to register more medical providers with KASPER required by the new law. She said in 2011 there were 879 master accounts registered with KASPER but after last Friday there are now 17,048 master accounts. She said each account has an average of two designated users.

The system operates in real time and the average time for a KASPER report to be electronically transmitted is only 15 seconds. But if certain information is incorrectly entered by a medical provider or if the patient may be known by multiple forms of a name, those reports get kicked out for a manual review and those can sometimes take a couple of days.

But Hopkins said prescribers are allowed in those cases to prescribe the drugs until the report is received.

RONNIE ELLIS writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.