Rating:

5.0 (1 vote)

ONLY ON MONTANA'S NEWS STATION On average, the Montana Department of Health & Human Services receives 200 to 600 applications for medical marijuana each week. The News Station's Marnee Banks looked into the manpower needed to fill those requests.

Jeff Buska, DPHHS administrator for quality assurance, said that the department has even seen as many as 1,100 applications in one week. With that kind of volume, issuing a card typically takes between three and four weeks.

At the end of March, just over 12,000 people in Montana held active medical marijuana cards; by the end of May, that number had grown to over 16,000.

DPHHS processes every application, and with demand increasing, so does the strain on the agency. Buska noted, "It's not very efficient for us, especially with the volume that we are experiencing."

Eight staff members process the applications using a basic data-entry program; Buska says the program limits what the state can track, and how fast it can issue cards.

He explained, "To fix the program, we started a little over a year ago and we started doing some programming and designing a new database. We can keep track of the patient's history of enrollment, history of caregiver changes, and it's going to make it more efficient for us to be able to respond to law enforcement inquiries."

When it becomes operational, the new system will allow law enforcement to access the registry 24/7; with the old program, they could only access it during regular business hours. The department is purchasing the new program using application fees.

Buska said, "Oh yes, I think the new system is going to be wonderful. It is going to create a lot more efficiencies for us to keep track of all the applications that we have here, status of those application, and be able to approve things and issue cards more efficiently."

The new system is still in the testing phase, but Buska says he hopes to have it operational by the first part of July.