Evidence status: CURRENT PRESCRIBER-SCOPE AND EXEMPTION RECORD. Delaware’s statewide opioid regulation defines the covered practitioner broadly and then exempts specific patient categories from the regulation.
Who is a practitioner
For Section 9, “practitioner” includes a physician, dentist, podiatrist, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, or other person licensed, registered, or otherwise permitted by Delaware or federal law to prescribe a controlled substance in professional practice. Veterinarians are excluded from this opioid-prescribing definition.
Chronic pain definition
Chronic pain means continuous or nearly continuous pain lasting more than three months for purposes of the regulation.
Patient categories exempt from Section 9
- Hospice-care patients.
- Patients receiving active cancer treatment.
- Patients experiencing cancer-related pain.
- Terminally ill or palliative-care patients.
- Hospital patients during the hospital stay, including a discharge prescription when the discharge prescription is seven days or less.
Why scope matters
The statewide Treatment Agreement rule reaches more than physicians, but it does not apply to every controlled-substance prescriber or every pain patient without qualification. The practitioner definition, chronic-pain trigger, and explicit exemptions must be read together.
Primary source
Reviewed: October 5, 2026.