Effective January 1, 2020, The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation re adopted amendments to The Illinois Physician Assistant Practice Act. Previously, the Act used the term "supervising" physician to refer to licensed physicians. The updated Rule (68 Ill. Admin. Code 1350) refers to licensed physicians as "collaborating" physicians and expands the number of full-time physician assistants that a licensed physician may collaborate from 2 to 7. Even this limit may be exceeded in certain circumstances where there is a health care professional shortage as defined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Physician assistants may now prescribe schedule II controlled substances if given the authority to do so by a collaborating physician. The delegation is completely up to the physician. And, significantly, schedule II controlled substances that are administered intravenously may not be delegated to physician assistants. Physician assistants may only prescribe schedule II substances that are routinely prescribed by the collaborating physician, and for a maximum of 30 days without physician approval. A collaborating physician must establish written guidelines governing physician assistant prescriptive authority with respect to controlled of scheduled substances and keep a copy of such guidelines at every location where a physician assistant practices.