(a)(1) The information required by this article to be kept by the Board of Pharmacy is confidential and not subject to the provisions of 29B-1-1 et seq. of this code or obtainable as discovery in civil matters absent a court order and is open to inspection only by inspectors and agents of the Board of Pharmacy, members of the West Virginia State Police expressly authorized by the Superintendent of the West Virginia State Police to have access to the information, authorized agents of local law-enforcement agencies as members of a federally affiliated drug task force, authorized agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, duly authorized agents of the Bureau for Medical Services, duly authorized agents of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for use in post-mortem examinations, duly authorized agents of the Office of Health Facility Licensure and Certification for use in certification, licensure, and regulation of health facilities, duly authorized agents of licensing boards of practitioners in this state and other states authorized to prescribe Schedules II, III, IV, and V controlled substances, prescribing practitioners and pharmacists, a dean of any medical school or his or her designee located in this state to access prescriber level data to monitor prescribing practices of faculty members, prescribers, and residents enrolled in a degree program at the school where he or she serves as dean, a physician reviewer designated by an employer of medical providers to monitor prescriber level information of prescribing practices of physicians, advance practice registered nurses, or physician assistants in their employ, and a chief medical officer of a hospital or a physician designated by the chief executive officer of a hospital who does not have a chief medical officer, for prescribers who have admitting privileges to the hospital or prescriber level information, and persons with an enforceable court order or regulatory agency administrative subpoena. All law-enforcement personnel who have access to the Controlled Substances Monitoring Program Database shall be granted access in accordance with applicable state laws and the Board of Pharmacys rules, shall be certified as a West Virginia law-enforcement officer and shall have successfully completed training approved by the Board of Pharmacy. All information released by the Board of Pharmacy must be related to a specific patient or a specific individual or entity under investigation by any of the above parties except that practitioners who prescribe or dispense controlled substances may request specific data related to their Drug Enforcement Administration controlled substance registration number or for the purpose of providing treatment to a patient: Provided, That the West Virginia Controlled Substances Monitoring Program Database Review Committee established in 60A-9-5(b) of this code is authorized to query the database to comply with 60A-9-5(b) of this code.
(2) Subject to the provisions of 60A-9-5(a)(1) of this code, the Board of Pharmacy shall also review the West Virginia Controlled Substances Monitoring Program Database and issue reports that identify abnormal or unusual practices of patients and practitioners with prescriptive authority who exceed parameters as determined by the advisory committee established in this section. The Board of Pharmacy shall communicate with practitioners and dispensers to more effectively manage the medications of their patients in the manner recommended by the advisory committee. All other reports produced by the Board of Pharmacy shall be kept confidential. The Board of Pharmacy shall maintain the information required by this article for a period of not less than five years. Notwithstanding any other provisions of this code to the contrary, data obtained under the provisions of this article may be used for compilation of educational, scholarly, or statistical purposes, and may be shared with the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources for those purposes, as long as the identities of persons or entities and any personally identifiable information, including protected health information, contained therein shall be redacted, scrubbed, or otherwise irreversibly destroyed in a manner that will preserve the confidential nature of the information. No individual or entity required to report under 60A-9-4 of this code may be subject to a claim for civil damages or other civil relief for the reporting of information to the Board of Pharmacy as required under and in accordance with the provisions of this article.