If a Jackman resident has an emergency that calls for antibiotics, they have to find the time to drive an hour and a half to the nearest pharmacy.

“If they can’t immediately get down to Skowhegan or over to Greenville,” Town Manager Rick Petrie said, “they don’t fill their prescription. And now the infection gets worse.”

Petrie wanted to change that. He used a grant to purchase a remote pharmacy dispensing machine for Jackman’s local health clinic. He advocated for a law that would allow a retail pharmacy to stock and staff it. The only thing left was for the Maine Board of Pharmacy to establish remote dispensing site licensing rules by June 2026, giving regulators more than a year.

The board missed the deadline last week.

The delay prolongs pharmaceutical access issues that communities across Maine are eager to resolve. About 45% of the state’s residents live in a pharmacy desert — defined as at least a 15-minute drive from the closest pharmacy — creating medication access issues that experts say are anywhere from inconvenient to dangerous.

Sen. Brad Farrin, R-Somerset, who sponsored the remote pharmacy bill, said it was built from a place of hardship for rural residents.

“What surprises me is that we had a lot of support on this legislation, and it actually gathered a little national publicity as a model that could be used in other places,” Farrin said. It’s disappointing, he said, “to feel like you kind of accomplished something, and then have the bureaucracy bog it down.”

Kristin Racine, deputy director of Maine’s Office of Professional and Occupational Regulation, said a draft rule will be presented later this year. The volunteer-run Board of Pharmacy, she said, “has a significant rulemaking workload, as well as high numbers of licensing applications and disciplinary actions it needs to review.”

Half of Maine’s 16 counties have pharmacy deserts, with the greatest distances impacting Washington, Waldo, Piscataquis, Somerset and Oxford counties, according to data from a 2025 GoodRx analysis. A 10th of Maine’s pharmacies closed between 2013 and 2023, and more have shuttered since.

Living in a pharmacy desert costs patients time, fuel and money, especially if the closest pharmacy isn’t the one their insurance plan prefers. Then there’s the people who can’t drive, said rural family physician Amy Madden, “compounding the existing social drivers of health that affect rural populations disproportionately.”

Others have faced life-or-death situations. Dr. Jonnathan Busko, an emergency medicine physician who works with the Community Care Partnership of Maine, remembers a patient who had to be airlifted from Monhegan Island, in the gulf of Maine, because she had developed sepsis after a cat bite.

Her doctor had prescribed her antibiotics, but Busko said she could not get them because the lone mail boat to the island didn’t come between Monday and Thursday.

A number of healthcare models dry up in pharmacy deserts, Busko said.

“Without access to acute prescription medications, a lot of the benefit of telehealth is lost in rural areas,” Busko said.

While Jackman has already purchased the dispensing machine, held trainings and initiated pharmacy partnerships, it isn’t the only community brought to a standstill by the LD 239 delay. Officials from Monhegan, Saint Croix and Rangeley had also been looking at remote dispensing sites as a creative way to increase access to pharmacy services.

At a minimum, the law says that remote dispensing sites must be supervised by a licensed pharmacist and meet guidelines — to be crafted by the board of pharmacy — on record keeping, security and surveillance.

Amy Downing, executive director of the Maine Pharmacy Association, said the board’s “careful consideration” is a good thing.

“It’s important to establish clear, practical standards that protect patients while allowing pharmacies to successfully implement the program,” Downing said. “We remain hopeful the rules will be finalized soon so pharmacies can begin exploring opportunities to expand access to pharmacy services in underserved communities.”

Jackman will wait as long as it takes.

“We’ve waited 18 months, we’re committed to this,” Petrie said. “This is an important thing, and we certainly want them to take the time they need to make sure they get the rules right. So if they need another six months to do that, then, as disappointing as that is, then we’re happy to wait that out.”

Farrin said he is meeting with board of pharmacy leaders on Monday to discuss a more specific timeline.