Rep. Scott Fetgatter researched the causes & reported back to SoonerPolitics.
In our recent news article, OMMA Audit Reveals False Agency Reports of Licenses, we asked several questions about what the root causes might be. In our investigation we reached out to one of the legislators who devoted extensive attention to the new agency and it's operation.
Representative Scott Fetgatter of Okmulgee said he'd look into the matter when we contacted him Monday evening. Early this afternoon he responded with the news that the agency provided directly to him. He said that the custom software system the OMMA is using, has a counting system that gives running totals in every classification of licensing. But a glitch in the software is evidently resulting in a redundant count when a license holder provides updated information about their existing license. So if a dispensary needs to follow up with new information, they would update their details with the OMMA. But that would inadvertently be counted as 2 licenses, while only one actual license exists. We're not sure if a change in appointed caregiver may also be a factor, so that when a patient cancels a caregiver license and appoints another, does the software still tabulate two licenses when only one exists? the Caregiver count is the most radical category of change in the new report. |
Whatever the scenarios may be, the OMMA is now aware of the glitch. Evidently an alert staffer at the authority caught it in the process, sometime recently. It probably explains why there was no update posted during the last half of May. Since the back up safeguards are likely a more cumbersome, and perhaps manual; the Agency is now planning to give us updates every 2 weeks, instead of the weekly reports that have been tweeted since last September.
Fetgatter commented at how quickly we went to press on this issue. We surmise that he may be relating the reaction of the OMMA when they found out the the story was already published just hours after they sent their short single tweet. I commented to Fetgatter that these numbers are important to industry forecasters and venture capitol activity. We had a detailed discussion about what numbers might indicate a saturated market and at what point the ratio of active dispensaries to active patronizing patients would be a sustainable and stable condition for more long term industry forecasting. Last August the Commissioner of Health, Tom Bates, told a bicameral interim study that he was using Arizona's numbers in his agency's projection that Oklahoma would have about 78,000 patients in the first year. We are approaching double that number and about 3 months are remaining for that number to climb higher. Bates also said we'd likely see about 2000 Medical Marijuana Businesses (MMBs) licensed in the 1st year. We now have over 5300 MMB licenses already issued. |
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