The Hawai‘i State Department of Health released the Merit Criteria and Point Allocations that will be included on the Dispensary Application in January. The new document provides point allocations for each of the 13 criteria that the Department of Health will consider when determining which applicants are awarded a dispensary license. These criteria are also listed in the new DoH administrative rules, released by the Department of Health on Dec 15, 2015, Section: 11-850-20.
The new point allocations show that each of the thirteen criteria will be weighted equally by the Department of Health. The rest of Section 11-850-20 provides for DoH’s process in evaluating the applications:
(b) Each merit criterion will be worth a number of points announced by the department in the notice open application period.
(c) The department shall group the applications according to the county of proposed licensure.
(d) A review panel comprised of members designated by the department who have relevant expertise shall evaluate the applications and award points for each merit criterion. The points shall be totaled for each application and the applications ranked from the highest total score to the lowest total score within each group.
(e) In order to be awarded a license based on merit criteria, an applicant must be able to show the ability to operate a dispensary.
(f) The department shall award a dispensary license to the highest scoring applicant or applicants within each group. The department shall notify in writing each of the applicants of their respective score and ranking for their respective group. The department shall post on its website the total score for each applicant.
(g) The department shall hold unselected applications in reserve to offer a license to the next highest scoring applicant if the highest scoring applicant fails to pay the licensing fee in accordance with section 11-850-21. When all available licenses within each group have been issued, the department shall remove all unselected applications from its list of reserved applications in that group and notify all applicants.
There will be an informational briefinglater in December, where the DoH will update the Legislature on the status of the new rules and their implementation. Your Alliance is also being given the opportunity to provide the Legislature with its view of the new rules at the briefing.
As always, the Alliance will be here to keep you informed of the process. Follow us on our Facebook or Twitter to weigh-in on the new rules! Let us know if you have any questions about the administrative rules or upcoming application period. Join the Alliance today to receive our Hawai‘i specific newsletter and analysis of the new rules in our upcoming issue.