In order to provide our customers with the most current US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) guidelines for locum tenens physicians, please note the following recent changes in the DEA policies and suggested actions:

• If a physician has any physical contact (dispending, storing, administering, etc) with a controlled substance they must have an active DEA registration with the address of the exact location in which they would be dispending, storing, administering, etc.
• If a physician is only writing prescriptions, they only need a DEA registration with the same issuing state as where they will be prescribing.

Practitioners may only administer, dispense, or prescribe a controlled substance in a state if they [first] hold a DEA registration in that state, and are complying with all federal and state laws and regulations.

If any changes to the physician's current DEA situation need to be made to meet one of the two requirements listed above, below are the three available options:

1. A practitioner can apply for a separate DEA registration in each state where they plan to administer, dispense, or prescribe controlled substances.
2. As an alternative, if the practitioner will be working solely in a hospital/clinic setting, they may use the hospital's DEA registration instead of registering independently with DEA if the hospital agrees and the situation warrants, as outlined in 21 C.F.R. §1301.22(c);  
3. Alternately, under 21 C.F.R. §1301.51, the practitioner may transfer their existing DEA registration from one state to another as needed by contacting ODR, or requesting the change on-line at www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov.   The DEA will investigate these modifications of registration as if they were new applications and will issue a new DEA certificate with the appropriate changes if they approve the modification.

If you should have any questions, please feel free to contact the DEA directly at 1-800-882-9539 or you can go online at www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov.