New RI Law Lets Pharmacists Run Blood Tests

A law that took effect July 1 authorizes Rhode Island pharmacists to perform simple medical tests and to enter into formal treatment arrangements with a wider range of health providers, dismantling an approval system the profession's own trade group calls the most cumbersome in the country.

Governor Daniel McKee signed S2866, sponsored by Senator Bridget Valverde, a Democrat representing North Kingstown, East Greenwich, and South Kingstown, on June 22, 2026. The measure moved through the General Assembly without a single recorded no vote — the Senate passed it 38-0 on June 10, and the House concurred 63-0, with 12 members not voting, on June 11.

The law rewrites Rhode Island's rules on collaborative pharmacy practice, the written agreements that let pharmacists manage a patient's medication and provide clinical services under a supervising prescriber's protocol. The bill makes two structural changes and adds one clinical power.

First, it allows healthcare providers other than physicians to enter into these agreements, broadening the pool of prescribers a pharmacist can partner with. Second, it strikes the definition of the "collaborative practice committee" — the six-member panel, three appointees drawn from the Board of Pharmacy and three from the Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline, that reviewed and advised on every agreement. Third, the bill authorizes pharmacists to perform A1c and cholesterol tests, along with other screenings classified as waived under the federal Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments, or CLIA.

CLIA-waived tests are the low-complexity screenings federal regulators deem simple enough to run outside a clinical laboratory — blood glucose and hemoglobin A1c checks, cholesterol panels, rapid strep and flu tests, pregnancy tests, and rapid COVID-19 antigen tests among them. In practice, the change means a resident refilling a prescription could have a diabetes or cardiovascular screening done at the counter rather than scheduling a separate lab appointment.

The collaborative-agreement framework is not new to Rhode Island. According to testimony the Rhode Island Pharmacists Association submitted to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee on April 1, pharmacists have worked under such agreements alongside physicians and advanced practitioners in the state for nearly 20 years. The association told the committee that the state's approval process had become a bottleneck — that "there have been delays in the approval of new and older agreements, which can impact patient care" — and attributed the problem to a process requiring both the Boards of Pharmacy and Medicine to sign off. The group described Rhode Island as the only state in the country with a process as complex, a characterization that could not be independently confirmed.

The association, which backed the bill, told the committee the measure carries no fiscal cost and is "mostly technical," easing an administrative burden on the Department of Health. No fiscal note or independent budget analysis of that claim was located, and no organized opposition to the bill surfaced during its passage.

What the law does not do is turn pharmacists into independent clinicians. The agreements still operate under protocols set by a supervising physician or other prescriber, and pharmacists who take part must complete at least five additional hours of board-approved continuing education on collaborative practice each year — a requirement the new law leaves intact.

Several questions remain unresolved three weeks into the law's life. The precise roster of "other healthcare providers" now eligible to partner with pharmacists has not been spelled out in regulation, and it is not yet clear how quickly community pharmacies will pursue the certifications needed to offer testing or whether insurers will cover the screenings. Whether removing the committee actually shortens approval times — the law's central promise — cannot be measured until the state accumulates several months of data under the new system.

For now, residents interested in the expanded services would need to check with individual pharmacies, which are not required to offer testing and may roll it out on their own timelines.