Bugs in a state-run software system that medical cannabis dispensaries use to verify patient eligibility have resulted in hundreds of patients being turned away over the span of several days.
“It’s making us look bad to the patients,” said Chris Jeffery, owner of WholesomeCo. “We can’t serve patients, and some of these patients are terminal cancer patients. They need their medicine, and we had to turn them away.”
On Sunday, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services installed a new electronic verification system — used to ensure customers have a valid medical cannabis card and to track purchases to ensure they aren’t sold more than is legally allowed. It was supposed to go live Monday morning.
But shops quickly ran into problems, unable to access some patients’ records. Selling to patients without checking their eligibility can carry a fine of up to $5,000 and jeopardize the store’s license, so numerous patrons had to be turned away.
According to representatives of three Utah companies — Beehive Farmacy, Dragonfly Wellness and WholesomeCo — 20% of the patients who have come into their dispensaries since Monday have been unable to make purchases.
Bijan Sakaki, owner of Beehive Farmacy, estimated that more than 100 customers could not be processed through the verification system at his store alone. Since the issues impacted all of the dispensaries in the state — some do considerably larger volume than Beehive — hundreds of patients had to leave empty-handed.
Or almost empty-handed.
“We have tried to work with the patients,” Sakaki said. “If [the clerks] can’t get it done, they give them a discount card for their next visit.”
The downside, he said, is that means he’s losing the sale and the discount on the next sale. Worse, Sakaki said, is that because every dispensary in the state is required to use the same software, patients are unable to just go to another store to get their medicine.
“Their only choice,” he said, “is to go to a dealer or go to Wendover.”
Desiree Hennessy, who leads the Utah Patient Coalition, said Utah’s program puts an emphasis on ensuring products are tested and meet standards — part of the reason prices are high. Patients who can’t get their medicine at a dispensary and then buy it illicitly aren’t guaranteed that level of purity and end up taking a risk.
A spokesperson for the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the software, said that “most patients could purchase medical cannabis without issues, but this reportedly caused a small number of patients to be unable to purchase medical cannabis.”
A short-term work-around has been put in place while the department and the vendor strive to address the software issues, the department said. By Wednesday, it added, all patients were able to check in at the pharmacy and buy cannabis.
“Medical cannabis patients are our main priority,” the department stated, “and we are glad that a temporary fix is in place so all patients can purchase medical cannabis.”
Part of the dispensary owners’ frustration is that Utah didn’t test the software before it went live and had no backup plan in case it failed. When it did, they said, the state suggested that they verify the patients using the last four digits of their Social Security numbers but later backed away from that idea.
For its part, the Department of Health and Human Services said the software had undergone extensive testing since May. It was installed at the pharmacies Sunday evening and went live Monday. While it had bugs, the department said it is functioning properly — without the work-around — as of Saturday.
Replacing the verification system is just the first phase in a three-part overhaul of the software the state uses for the medical cannabis program. The next step is replacing the software cashiers use at the point of sale and then the state will replace the “seed-to-sale” software used to track every plant grown in Utah.
The dispensary owners hope the health department learned lessons that will help avoid these kinds of disruptions in the future.
“I’m just worried that this is the first of three steps of the reboot of the software across the industry,” said Jeffery, who worked in technology before moving to the cannabis business. “We need a little more time and attention paid on some very foundational aspects of the software that were either overlooked or weren’t working from an engineering perspective.”
Editor’s note • Aug. 17, 9:25 p.m.: The story has been updated to reflect that the Department of Health and Human Services said Saturday that the software had been tested before deployment and that a permanent fix was being worked on and soon would be verified. This article is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.